can people on here stop using female to mean weak/pathetic/submissive and acting like its funny and subversive

‘he’s such a wife’ ‘he’s my pathetic little babygirl’ applying female terms to men is not subverting gender its just your conservative dad’s sexism in sparkly packaging.

calling men women to demean them is not the quirky rebellion you think it is

Hey, how are you doing? Firstly, i'll understand if you choose not to answer this ask since the subject is controversial and kinda heavy

We currently have at least two pedos in the story, like, actual pedos (the guy obsessed with Liliana and the creepy butler that i forgot the name) and then tappei's writing in some things is just... weird?

I get that subaru and beatrice are supposed to have a sibling relationship, but it just weirds me out

And he keeps adding loli characters with questionable designs too

What is your opinion on this? Its something i manage to ignore, but it still weird me out a little

hi anon!! :o thanks for asking how im doing pfft im doing pretty well - though i am a college student and its This Time of Year (end of semester) so im hanging in here lmao 👍

also ok as for the topic at hand!! yeah no i 100% hate it. ive been thinking about rezeros flaws lately because the further you get into watching/reading rezero the Clearer it gets. its mostly fine at say, arc 1, but by the time you get to arc 5 or arc 8 its like. What the hell. This again?? so yeah its 100% understandable to be weirded out and uncomfortable by it because tappeis writing is frankly Gross sometimes.

(okay also yes this ask has minor or major arc 5+ spoilers yes and also. You know. detailed discussion regarding rezero sexualizing children.)

yeah so tappei writes problematic things into rezero regarding both women and children especially, and while theres exceptions its like. very Prevalent in rezero. i talked about it a bit in my last ask if youd like to check that out!! but yeah like. i hate how children are treated in rezero. its very Problematic a lot of the time.

tappeis writing follows very similar patterns regarding treatment of children and women that you see in a Lot of other anime/manga/japanese media - and media in general, really, but im sure most anime watchers / manga readers will know what im talking about because its unfortunately That common. we're all seen this. like fan service shots, lolis and shotas, etc etc. but rezero is a little more insidious i think, just because tappei is capable of writing good characters regardless of age or gender. and theres Less of stuff like fan service - or at least rezero is a little less obvious about it or its just seen less in rezero, but thats also because media in general is so in your face about it and Unfortunately Common so rezero looks like a tiny bit of paradise in the middle of a barren desert.

i mean look at the amount of people who've thought rezero was a harem anime until they watched rezero - rezero seems like an outlier but thats only because its just a tiny bit less gratuitous and it still has a lot of good writing. and also because i am pretty sure the bar for media like this - especially media in rezeros genre (isekai) is Extremely Low. like depressingly low. and despite rezero being a deconstruction of isekai, rezero also contradicts its own damn messages sometimes about treating others like the People they are, respecting others Personhood, treating women well, etc. and its easy to see that the moment you look at some of otsuka's artwork and designs for rezero or if you look at all the rezero merch mainly based around the girls and Sexualizing the girls and its like. my god this is a little depressing to look at. rezero is just a tiny step in the right direction away from say, misogynist shounen/seinen media thats also weird about kids or something, but then rezero trips and falls on its own face after taking several right moves.

the problem is that these problematic aspects are still there, theyre still clear to see if youre paying attention, and often character arcs start well but then fall flat despite the good foundation. and then the problematic aspects hammer the already Poor/Inconsistent Writing into the ground which it makes it Even Worse.

like louis is a great character. shes fascinating, really. and then you hit arc 7 and she regresses immediately into the mind of a toddler so we only get to see her amnesiabaru/Suffering From Rbd arc in arc 6, her confrontation with subaru, and then BAM its arc 7 time and now she is an entirely different person????? i remember raging the further i got into arc 7/8 and realizing she hasnt gotten any development, she just changed instantly. it just feels lazy to me!! unless tappei proves me wrong and writes her developing but right now louis has spent two goddamn arcs being subaru and rems loli prop/daughter prop/a plot device to use in battle, basically. okay sorry i got passionate there but i SWEAR it gets on my nerves a bit. the louis/spica conflict now would feel so much more thrilling if she didnt have her weird half assed arc 7 development.

like if i was really in the fantasy world, of course i wouldnt vote to kill spica, shes innocent now. she doesnt know shit about her crimes, shes a whole other person now. she didnt do those things. she is an innocent child. i did a poll on this a while back actually haah and yeah a lot of rz tumblr, including myself, voted to let her live for this reason!! but also like. narratively speaking. i do not care about spica at all. shes a blank slate, shes just there to move the plot, she is taking up space in the plot right now and she does not need to be here forever. i 1000% want her dead hah. yeah shes this cute little kid now, but again, she got zero development. why should i care about her?? all the interesting things about her in arc 6, all the potential that couldve happened out of her gradually going from her arc 6 self to someone who genuinely cares about rem and subaru is gone. If we actually saw this change, personally id care more about spica and be invested in her character but as it stands im really Not. and i think if we saw her actually Develop a lot of us readers would be more invested to see this conflict out - not only because our Favs are fighting over it, but also because we’d actually care about spica. Like. im not sure how many people actually care about louis past arc 6, but yeah thats just my personal thoughts on it.

And also the Other big flaw with louis’s character is tappei once again being creepy regarding kids and. Okay im gonna show an excerpt from the arc 6 WN (iirc ch60 to be exact?) and yeah fair warning because it is once again sexualizing a child (louis). But also im putting it here in case anyone wants to see some vivid proof of rezero being weird about kids. Im not sure if this was cut from the LN version or not but the fact that it exists At All makes me want to put tappei on a watchlist.

And okay i know you might be thinking about how louis represents the sin of gluttony anyway and gluttony includes sexual or romantic desire too and how having louis, who looks like a child, say this makes it even more Offputting - like. Yeah. but is it Necessary? because making louis, WHO LOOKS LIKE A CHILD, say all this and then use descriptors like “expressed a bewitching smile unsuited to her age” - is this Actually necessary? You have to be careful writing this sort of thing, because a child/character who looks like a child saying things like this due to being, you know, Mentally Unwell, is different from Emphasizing What Theyre Saying By Sexualizing Them via the narration and descriptions. And why is the sexologist line there?? its just frankly uncomfortable, to an unnecessary extent, i think. I just dont think we need all this emphasis on louis’s body, louis’s apparent “arousal”, or how her smile is “unsuited to her age” (this is the narrative once again sexualizing a child), and plot-related sex/sexual content in rezero is kept to a minimum anyway so you could also literally just have louis be weird about “loving subaru” without the sexual aspect. Because she literally just said that she was aroused by him. she looks like shes twelve at most and then in the arc immediately after this one she regresses back to having the mentality of a toddler!!! and then shes subaru’s daughter there.

And again, i know that the whole point of this scene is to be off-putting and disturbing and wrong in all sorts of ways (and also subaru tries to kill louis a page later so like.) but i think if youre going to keep the appetite=sexual desire detail (which IS a good point about gluttonys nature, on its own), then this scene absolutely needed to be handled better than what we got when the character saying this is a child. you can write a child sexualizing herself because shes frankly Unwell or Doesnt Know Better, because this is fiction and you can write sensitive topics like this with proper care, but if you, the author, are sexualizing this child, then that is a Whole Other Thing.

or you can entirely dodge this whole debate over whether or not this is actually okay to write by making louis look older. but tappei went with this route once again in a sea of rezeros various child characters despite the fact that tappei then decides to link sexual desire to the sin of gluttony, which is a sin occupied in rezero by three children. I know ley has a very traumatic backstory, and the specific details are escaping me but iirc he was likely a slave or something along those lines, with implications that hes been abused by adults, so you could delicately handle what kind of abuse he Couldve unfortunately had to go through, and also of course roy and louis are clearly not okay in the head either, but. Once again. Children in rezero Not Being Sexualized in some way is a rarity. Unfortunately.

you see this pop up again and again and again. petra? Yeah iirc theres a side story where shes weird about subarus underwear. Correct me if im wrong on that but also i would not be surprised if that was a real side story. Unfortunately. Also theres Uncomfortable lines regarding petras chest.

according to rezero wiki, schult is… well iirc al makes creepy comments about schult being a shota (and of course this isnt really called out in canon), and theres also these two details about schult:

also regarding sin archbishops who look very young, capella represents lust and yet she also looks like a child. i know the point of her design is to make her a bit grotesque, but you can get that point across without making her look fifteen years old at most. this is the sin of lust too. and shes already called “Mama” in canon—she doesnt need to look that young!!**

also side note about pandora. she also looks like a child, which—its okay with her, except for the frankly lazy outfit design imo?? why is she wearing a bedsheet??**

** another edit: its easy to see capella and pandora as women also, but again, tappei and otsuka In General keep mixing up short/young women and Children and it should be easy to tell if pandora and capella are children or young women or not. but i dont feel that its clear enough given tappei and otsuka’s Track Record.

and typhons design with the see through skirt is so creepy and disturbing that im Really glad the anime fixes it most of the time. heres the fixed version:

but also the anime Really doesnt fix it as much as it probably should, because her dress is Still see-through in some shots. you can even see a bit in this shot—we dont need to see her lower body area like That!! this skirt doesnt need to be see-through!! and the bar was already in hell anyway because otsuka makes typhon’s skirt Really see-through.

theres also this photo of typhons design and its Way better without that see-through skirt.

granted, there is some good child character designs—felt’s arc 1 design frankly sucks though purely because of the way her outfit is handled. like its Really bad. it takes only like one look to see that. but her arc 5 design is a Huge Improvement:

characters like meili, schult, child subaru, etc have good designs too, but you know, this doesnt change the Creepiness regarding children, because this also applies to subaru and Some Lines about him in arc 8 iirc. if i find them again ill talk about it another time (or if someone else finds it feel free to add on to this post?) but yeah just. urgh.

regarding felt again, theres a scene in a felt camp side story where she wakes up naked in bed, post arc 1, after reinhard kidnaps her to his mansion. and yeah, the whole point of the scene is to show reinhard is kind of dense and bad at reading social cues because hes still trying to talk to her very civilly while shes covering herself with the bedsheets and she Literally just got kidnapped by him, but, say it with me, she doesnt need to be naked. she couldve woken up in bed in her usual clothes and the point still wouldve come across!! WHY is she naked??? shes fourteen.

and also like capella, liliana looks like a child. and of course theres kiritaka, as anon said, whos obsessed with liliana, and then theres clind, the creepy butler. and of course tappei has “deniability” because lilianas not Really a child (she STILL looks like one), and clinds not Really a pedophile, he just likes youthful souls!! (this is literally disgusting.) and clind may have interesting lore or whatever about how hes kind of involved with the sin archbishop of melancholy but i just dont give a shit about him when hes a pedophile that tappei keeps excusing.

also mimi? mimi is a Special Case.

the thing with mimi and her brothers is that its implied in the kararagi girl and cats eye side stories that kittypersons (??) are fully grown by age 1. theyre rescued from dying on the streets but they insist theyre “fully grown” (at age 2-3). they havent changed physically at all. and they dont change physically at all later, because now in the Present Day they all look Exactly the same as they did when they were 1, 2, 3 years old. did they grow mentally???? theyre like 14-15 in the main route. and then you look at aganau route from the lost in memories mobile game which takes place around twenty (??) years after arc 3, and mimi is a grown woman and she looks exactly the same as she did when she was 14 or 2 years old. and then this makes her romance with garfiel a little weird because hes a normal fourteen year old??? but mimis been fully grown all this time??? what??

this is mimi. yeah, she and her brothers look EXACTLY this age their WHOLE LIVES.

and meili? yeah shes definitely one of the better child characters, though she does have an Extremely Traumatic backstory and has had a habit of copying elsa. this on its own is fine and understandable. elsa was her only support and shes a child, of course shes gonna copy elsa. though iirc she also copies elsa’s “flirtatious” aspects, which is honestly also understandable given elsa is a Questionable Influence, but this detail about meili’s character gets worse when you think about it in the context of all the other child characters—

why is it that all the children tappei (and otsuka) keep sexualizing are in the same age range? theyre about 9 or 10 to 14. louis stops being sexualized when she reverts to being a toddler and becomes subarus daughter. felt stops being sexualized when she turns 15 in arc 5. emilia is the main love interest to subaru and shes apparently “mentally 14”?? and shes tappeis favorite character too? but also mimis case is so weird because shes been “fully grown” since the tender age of ONE YEARS OLD?? well also i sure hope im wrong on this point but given the amount of child characters that fall in this age range and also how Often theyre all sexualized and also the majority of them are Young Girls—yeah its. its not a great look.

(and again a side note about meili again—tappei uses similar descriptors that he used for louis: that its “inappropriate for her age” and that she’ll “attract many men in the future”. tappei stfu. please.)

subaru’s lolimancer title is kind of funny. maybe. until you remember rezero being creepy about kids. and also like—i dont like the idea of tying a word like “loli” to the literal main character of the story anyway skdnd. theres just Connotations to it.**

**EDIT: i was told that “loli” is apparently a fan translation thing, while in japanese its “little girl user”, but in an inoffensive way (like Jojo’s “stand user”). make of that what you will!! (not great that the fan translation makes rezeros already poor treatment of kids Even Worse.)

and also—was subaru, al, medium, etc turning into children really necessary?

like in subarus case, its so he can have more ego, more confidence, more recklessness while being nerfed a bit and being mistaken as the emperor’s son—but at the same time, this just feels like a watered down version of the amnesiabaru arc to me where he has more ego, more confidence, more recklessness, and hes nerfed, but then he learns to love himself more. it just feels too similar to the amnesiabaru arc imo. him turning into a child feels very unnecessary imo and it doesnt look great when you remember tappei and otsuka’s fixation on children. literally arc 8 would be exactly or almost exactly the same if subaru was back to his usual 18/19-year old self. but he has to keep being a kid right now because Plot, apparently. then again if anyone disagrees with me on this feel free to explain your stance!! but yeah as of rn i just want subaru to be back to his usual age.

also tappeis weird about young priscilla/prisca and lamia but i havent read the ex novels about them yet so i cannot go in depth 👍 but just know you get nice lovely lines (sarcasm) like “flirty way she caresses her own thighs”. great!!! thanks tappei for fanservicing underage teenage girls once again!!

and again, treatment of child characters / characters who look younger than they are in rezero—this is so so creepy also as someone who does in fact look younger than my age. and im also Very Short (4’11) too. so like. thanks tappei and otsuka!! i feel very comfortable right now 👍

and women are often infantilized in rezero which you can. Easily connect to the pedophilia, yeah. theres also age gap romances in general, and i mentioned emilia already (yeah. emisuba is an age gap romance.), but theres also ram and roswaal, frederica and clind, anastasia iirc gets described Weirdly sometimes because shes a short flat-chested woman, and recently theres been madeline and balleroy having a small moment (that feels. Romance coded. iirc.) in an arc 8 chapter.

they look like this by the way:

thanks tappei and otsuka once again for the creepy writing and designs that actively work against all the good parts of the damn story 👍

on a lighter note, i think beatrice in general + beatrice and subarus relationship is one of the better parts of rezero—iirc theres nothing creepy about it, and beatrice and subaru are very easy to read as a sister and brother relationship. theyve helped each other out in many ways, and theyve grown Very close by the time we see them in arc 5!! you could. Technically see their relationship as a father-daughter one too, but i dislike that take—not for bad reasons, but just because i feel like it doesnt fit them.

the thing with beatrice though is that shes simultaneously A Child but shes also like. 400 years old. so i do wish the narrative balanced that more post-arc 4–not in a creepy way of course. god no. but in the sense that shes mature in a lot of ways!! shes familiar with death and suffering!! shes intimately known Isolation!! that sort of thing. shes the one whos closest to subaru because of how he helped her in arc 4 (“choose me”), and also because she knows about his self-harm and heals his injuries. shes someone who can deeply understand subaru in a lot of ways in this sense, at least. the way they support each other feels more like a sibling bond to me and not a Parent-Child one just because youre not Really supposed to be leaning this much on your child for support. theres a power dynamic to a Parent-Child relationship, and beatrice and subaru are Equals.

plus echidna gaslight gatekeep girlbossed both of them, so theyre also siblings in that sense hah…

but yeah correct me if im wrong on that though regarding beatrice and subaru and im missing something?? but yeah as far as i remember and as far as i can tell, i think theyre actually one of the least creepy parts of rezero hah :,)

and then because this sort of thing is Unfortunately so common in media like rezero, we’re kind of conditioned to try and ignore it so we can keep reading or watching because its Everywhere. i still enjoy some of rezero, but its hard to ignore All Of This. and i think its important not to turn your brain off to it and recognize whats Wrong here, yeah. (unless it makes you so uncomfortable that you have to stop looking at rezero, which is very understandable.)

but yep. thats rezero for you.

-PINNED POST- (This entire Post is OOC)

-PLEASE READ WHOLE POST BEFORE INTERACTING-

18+ NSFW

MINORS GTFO

Actual Real-Life Homophobes, Transphobes, Racists, Rapists and Misogynists Fuck off and die! This is fantasy only. I’ll find out who you are and block you.

Asks are welcome from anyone. If you’re a curious Dom looking for tips or a Sub who wants to have some kinky interactions but want to stay anon, anyone with pussy is welcome for kink interactions too regardless of gender. Read more about my boundaries and limits below before submitting any questions or you may be ignored.

28 Cis Male, Canadian, Dom

GENERAL TRIGGER WARNINGS: I regularly include in my stories kinky and MADE UP/NOT REAL/ FANTASY depictions of Sexual Assault, Misogyny, Homophobia, Verbal abuse and Physical abuse. I add specific trigger warnings to my individual stories. If you feel triggered by something you read and I forgot to put in a warning please DM me and let me know.

I call myself straight but My sexuality is that I like pussy and I’m not really picky about whether the person who has it is a man or a woman. I do like Tits but also don’t care if you’re flat. Really, I have no set “Type” I like both femme and masc presenting people. Tomboys are just as hot to me as girls in cute dresses or tight outfits as an example.

My Boundaries are firm with strangers, I understand if you make mistakes or misread the pinned post but you get 1 warning before I block. Friends and Mutuals I’m a bit more forgiving with. But will still block if they push too far.

This blog just gives me a place to get shit out of my system. I volunteer a lot of my free time to support 2SLQBTQIA+ spaces and programs, but there’s been some internalized misogyny that has come up that I’m trying to deal with in a healthy way so it doesn’t get in the way of my volunteer work. Part dealing with that includes this blog.

I don’t have a crazy sexual history it’s just very diverse and I’ve experienced a variety of things. I’ve played out some Dykebreaking scenes a few times with consenting adults IRL it’s intense and takes planning and it is very draining but intensely hot and rewarding. I’m into more than just into Orientation play but that’s mostly what this blog will be.

I like writing, and I sext a lot. So this kink blog thing was just a natural extension of that.

NOW FOR THE IMPORTANT SHIT!

✅Into Roleplay, CNC, Orientation Play (Dykebreaking, Misgendering, and occasional Acebreaking), Humiliation, Cuckolding other men and/or Cuckquean, Abduction, Anon kink, Public Sex, Drugged/Intoxicated, sometimes Hypno is fun, Breath Play, light Impact play (No tools), Light Bondage and occasionally Anal. Very hot when women/girls call me “Daddy” but I’m not seeking out a DD/LG dynamic or into age-play. I’m sure there’s more, will edit as things change.

⚠️Soft Limits (Things I’m not actively Into but will explore with a TRUSTED partner or TRUSTED mutual.) are… Somno, Foot Stuff, Heavy Impact Play (w/tools such as whips or paddles) Complex Rope Play (Needs practice), Object Insertion, Lactation, Kigurumi, Impregnation

🛑Hard Limits:

Forced Feeding, Scat, Piss Play, Snuff, permanent Injury/disfigurement, Infantilism, Haematomania, Knife Play (I’ll use a knife or scissors to cut off your clothes if you want just don’t ask me to cut you.)Furry Play, Necrophilia, Beastiality, and Age Play.

When I begin a post or DM with “OOC:”it means I’m talking “Out Of Character” as a human being outside of the fantasy.

When I begin a post with “IC” it means I’m talking “In Character” almost all my posts are In Character, you will only see me specify this if It is a post where I switch back and forth between OOC and IC and have to clarify.

Example:

OOC: Be safe, Practice Rack. Fuck homophobes.

IC: Dumb dyke whore. How does it feel cumming on your rapists cock?

I will only share Private messages/DM’s on my blog if it has been previously agreed between me and the person on the other end of the DM’s.

If you don’t tell me a specific safe-word when we start interacting we use the stoplight system by default. If you have a preferred safe word then tell me.

GREEN = Yes keep doing that

YELLOW = Take it easy or be careful.

RED = IM SAFEWORDING STOP RIGHT NOW

LAST OF ALL! BE SAFE!

Safety Tips:

- Subs, Learn boundaries from more experienced Sub’s so you can learn the difference between abuse and kink.

- New Subs should read “The New Bottoming Book”

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- Don’t doxx yourself for any reason.

- Stay anonymous online

- Be aware of the risks of sending pics and giving out your name.

- Practice RACK (Risk Aware Consensual Kink)

- If you are going to do something potentially dangerous then be aware of the potential dangers and put safeguards in place to minimize them.

i really hope da:d has some better queer romance options for male elves in particular cause like the options in dai weren't great- like you've got "man from tevinter who literally defends enslaving people like you back to you and you can't really challenge him on it much" and "hope you're into bdsm" guy and that's it? why couldn't there have been one just soft and nice masc romance for male lavellans? or even one where your partner isn't super rude about your religion/culture in some way.

Like dorian and bull's romances are lovely in their own ways and esp if you just go "LALALALA" and head canon away some of the issues, but it sucks that you have to. They really needed one more to balance it out, like it's great for the people that are into it that they included a bdsm relationship and all, i just wish they'd had another one for m!elves since there's extra baggage with dorian on that point.

Honestly if they'd just made solas bisexual that would still have been a slightly better option too ( he is also -understandably-rude about the dalish, but at least you get lots of lore out of him and i think his romance would work the same regardless of inquisitor gender). Or Blackwall- like he's got strong hot bisexual lumberjack vibes already.

tbh really the only romance option for m!lavellans in general that i thought was just kinda nice and easy going was josie's , but i hate that you can't really bring her with you places and get party banter w/her. Cassandra is super religious and also kinda rude about it which is really off putting if you're not playing an andrastian.

i know it was more for time constraints that they made just about everybody in dragon age 2 bisexual so it's more inadvertently queer than on purpose, but it still feels comfier? in a lot of ways. Like yeah, queer people do run in groups, this makes sense and feels normal to me.

I am glad they've at least moved away from lines calling out masc queer relationships where the player's like "oh is it weird to be with a dude?" or the character calls attention to it in an unnaturally awkward way at least?

Which happens in both dragon age 2 and dragon age: origins and there's just a weird awkward treatment of male bisexual characters in both (esp with anders and zevran, but fenris has a line too). So they definitely seem to be getting a little better? And there's a some queer relationships in the da: absolution show so maybe that bodes better for da:d (they definitely seem to have a better diversity of queer folks on the writing staff now at least instead of just the one white cis gay dude who's kind of misogynistic so maybe)

"the Word of God tells the world of man that you are inferior to them"

VERY curious to know WHERE in the Bible it is established the woman is inferior to man, but ok.

Actually, Galatians 3:28 explicitly states that God makes no difference regardless of race, social class and gender (and is pretty much a verse rebuking racism, classism and sexism within the Church).

"Their deities are men"

YHWH is the Father but trascends males/female boundaries as we know them. God being identified as Male (e.g the Father) has literally no impact whatsoever in His relationship with female believers. Women aren't anymore "dominated" by God because He's male, than male believers. Actually, I always found pretty sweet how the Church (so both men and women lumped together) was metaphorically represented as a bride, and Jesus as the groom. That's because, as I said, the relationship each believer (regardless of their gender) has with God transcends how earthly comprehension of sex. Otherwise this would imply that men of the Church have homosexual relationship with the groom Jesus? 🤔

"Their prophets are men"

That's how I know you people have no idea what you're talking about.... The Bible actually have plentiful of female prophetess : Deborah, Huldah, Anne, Mary..... Just because the Bible doesn't have entire book feature their names, doesn't mean they aren't acknowledged as such. You people don't read the Bible, and it shows.

Otherwise you'd know it specifically talks about sons and DAUGHTERS prophecizing in the end times (Acts 2:17). Spiritual gifts -of which prophecy is one of them- can be acquired regardless of sex.

"Their teachers are men"

Christian women can be teacher actually - just to not teach men (1 Timothy 2:12). If anything, Christian education seems to withhold sex segregated education (which I'm personally a proponent of).

"these are men dominated cult, run by men and advocated by men to perpetuate their control"

God dominates the Church - not men. Actually the Bible does a great job that men will eventually always fall short of God holiness, and that believer should only rely to God Himself. You people have such a reductive vision of Christianism that you can't remotely comprehend that many of us live of faith outside of church communities, without a (male) church leader. And it's pretty embarrassing how comfortable to erase female's role in those communities ("run by men") when women's ministry have a whole part in the body of Christ. Just because Christan women aren't called to have a "leading" position, that they are not important or should be dismissed as insignificant. Funny how so called feminists are so prone to endorse the same behavior as misogynists, constantly downplaying women's achievement...

"Stop trying to carve out a space for yourself in a religion designed to subjugate you"

This doesn't make any sense. If the Church was seeking to subjugate women, it wouldn't compell them to remain celibate e.g free of any male dominance (their husband) e.g Paul letters.

Your entire narrative relies on a misconstrued tunnel vision of Christianism that fails the test of reality.

Christian women's existence isn't to "carve out a space" into anything. It's a DIRECT RELATIONSHIP with God.

Christian women could never attend any (male-led) church or Christian community one single time in their life and still be Christian. I'm sure you people can't even grasp the difference between the church (little c - buildings), and the Church (capital C - the body of Christ).

I have no idea why you're so obsessive in overestimating male influence in Christian women. Almost the entirety of biblical teaching are regardless gender (but also age, race, language, culture, time frame...). There's a reason why places where Christian influence is the strongest have the fairest life condition for women - but you conveniently ignore it and paint every abrahamic religion with the same brush. Sorry but Christians are different.

Jesus is the way the Truth and the Life.

Our Take on Feminism

By Isabel and Terrence

What does Feminism mean to you? How do you connect to it?

Isabel: To me, Feminism means the equality between all genders in regarding work, career, health access, and societal pressures. This means that equal opportunities and experiences are achievable by both those who identify as men, women, and other gender identities. But sometimes this can be complicated, for example just because different groups of people are allocated the same resources and opportunities does not mean that they are given fair or equal advantages over another group. This raises the question of equality vs equity. So I guess my answer would instead be that feminism, to me, means the equity of treatment for all genders solely based on gender identity. While I do believe feminism has some characteristics regarding equity between races and classes, which are also very important, that is not its main focus????

Terrence: Feminism to me means treating all people the same regardless of gender, recognizing that everyone deserves equal rights, opportunities, and respect. It's about dismantling societal norms and expectations that limit individuals based on their gender, and creating a world where everyone has the freedom to pursue their goals and aspirations without discrimination. True feminism seeks to create a society where diversity and inclusivity thrive, where individuals are valued for their abilities and character rather than being confined by traditional gender roles. With me growing up with women and embracing feminism from a young age, I believe in advocating for the rights and empowerment of all, fostering a world where equality knows no boundaries, and where each person can flourish regardless of their gender identity.

What is an example of feminism you have experienced in your life? How does feminism affect you? 

Terrence: Growing up in a household with women exposed me to both the strength of women and the importance of feminism. With my dad taking long trips abroad for work, I grew up in the hands of my grandmother and mother. Similarly, I watched some of my cousins on my dad’s side grow up in households headed by single mothers. I first-hand experienced how, despite not having a man consistently physically present in our household, the women in my life were able to fill these roles in both me and my sisters’ lives. Growing up taught me that a woman is capable of doing everything that a man can. Given this, imagine my shock to find out the need for the feminist movement. How could you tell me men and women aren’t equal? My upbringing says otherwise…

Isabel: While I am a woman, I never knew about feminism until late high school. Looking back onto my girlhood, I do have experiences where I was treated differently solely on the fact that I was a girl. I was perceived as more sensitive, less qualified in school and sports, and expected to always be on my best behavior. Being Latina made a difference in these experiences as I grew up in majority non-Latino communities. It somehow allowed people to think they had the right to push me over, including my classmates and some immature adults. So yes, in my short life I have had uncalled for experiences with misogynists. Due to this, I make it a mission to help raise my brother and future children into people who are respectful and view women, as well as others, as equals. 

What are some examples of traditional gender roles you have heard of or experienced growing up? How can we go against these? 

Isabel: Whew, maaaaany. I’ve been told by my family members that I shouldn’t dress a certain way, “you look like a man in that clothes”, that I should style my hair a certain way, “long hair would make you look more like a girl”, that I should behave a certain way, “don’t be loud or talk back, act like a lady”, that I should engage in certain activities, “go clean and cook”.  While I do enjoy girly outfits, having long hair, being quiet, cooking, cleaning, and being around babies, being told all of these things makes me want to do the opposite of what is expected. Maybe I just enjoy rebelling and creating chaos??? On the other hand, I have also heard family members say similar things to my guy cousins. “Where are the h*es?”, “when are you getting a house?”, “get to work, you’re lazy”, “Help me fix this”, or “don’t cry, be a man”. 

Terrence: I will personally say that I’m lucky to have grown up in a family that values women for who they are and encourages freedom and equality. A few gender roles I see outside that I’ve seen my family work to correct in our household include cooking/cleaning, sports, and emotional expression. From a young age, my parents worked to teach me and my sister how to cook and clean, emphasizing how everyone ought to know how to care for themselves, despite them being traditionally feminine tasks. Similarly, my parents enrolled both me and my sister in sports, emphasizing how everyone ought to take care of their bodies, despite it being a traditionally masculine activity. Additionally, my parents encouraged both me and my sister to learn how to express and articulate ourselves emotionally, despite emotional displays being a traditionally feminine act.

How would you like to see the feminist movement grow? 

Terrence: What I want to see is simple. I want to see the women of today and tomorrow treated equally. I want to see gender roles as less of a social construct and more of roles assigned to individuals based on their skills and interests. Isabel: Like Terrence, I also want to see the women of today and of the near future treated in a way that allows them to have the same opportunities and experiences as men without having to go out of their way to make it possible. I would also like to see the movement  grow as a community that is more inclusive and less anti-men. I know not every feminist is anti-men, but there are many feminist that fit this trope and create a stereotype for other feminist. 

Conclusion

Both Isabel & Terrence: To us, feminism is the idea and upholding of equality between all genders. Feminism, to us, means not having to worry about ourselves nor the women around us facing additional life challenges on the basis of factors outside of their control. Throughout both of our life experiences up to now, we relate to the idea that feminism has a room in both of our families as there are prominent gender roles associated with our cultures and familial beliefs. For example, men are generally regarded as strong, dominant leader figures charged with decision making where women, on the other hand, are generally regarded as subservient and caretakers/nurturers. Although biological factors play a role in the skills and traits acquired by each gender, it is the rigid societal barriers, which turn these differences in biological factors into blatant sexism.

Wait, why are you against people tagging with transandrophobia?

cause it's an incredibly useless word at best. or, it's people trying to invent "reverse transmisogyny" at worst (and I'm assuming I don't need to explain why "women oppress me for being a man" would be a bad take, especially in this context, right?). the term "transandrophobia" literally just doesn't describe any real axis of structural oppression, so I don't want people tagging my posts with it cause it annoys me lol (especially when people add the tag to posts that aren't even transmasc exclusive?!?!?!)

to clarify further (since I'm assuming this ask is in good faith, and I don't want to direct any hostility towards you specifically I promise): literally everything that's described as "transandrophobia" is just transphobia. there is no reason to label any of those experiences as something being felt specifically at the crossroads of transphobia and androphobia/misandry, because in case this isn't obvious: androphobia/misandry does not exist. no one is oppressed for being a man, and (in this context) they're only oppressed for being transgender. so ie: it's just transphobia. no societal man-hating here lol.

this is different than terms like transmisogyny, which exists because it is a real crossroads of oppression that does necessitate a label to describe. a woman who experiences both transphobia and misogyny needs a word to describe how both of those oppressions overlap.

so, simply put: you are not oppressed for being a man. being a man does not worsen any oppression you face. therefor, shoehorning "andro" into the already existing term "transphobia" adds no tangible depth nor additional purpose to the label - other than it being a weird and out-of-place "men's rights" thing

I'll say it again, "transandrophobia" is literally just trans meninism. and I wish I could express sympathy here as a fellow transmasc, who also faces the very real transphobia that's directed towards transmasc people, but tbh... I don't know how anyone above the age of 16 is falling for it. like, bro it's trans meninism. c'mon. :/

in before anyone pulls that "but being a man is inherent to my transgender identity! when people are transphobic towards me, it's because I'm calling myself a man!" card. to which I'll say: 1. again, the word u are looking for is just transphobia, like you are literally just describing a real and recognized form of transphobia. and an experience that affects more than just your one gender, I should add. trans men are by far not the only trans people who are hated and mistreated for identifying as their real* or chosen* gender. (*whichever descriptor the individual prefers). nor are they the only ones who are hated and mistreated for having masculine traits, physically or otherwise. in fact, I would go as far to say these two experiences are probably near universal among trans people facing transphobia, even if we face them with some variability. acting like this is solely or more harshly directed towards trans men is a very narrow worldview to have. and relatedly 2. yes, being a man may be inherent to your trans identity (it's inherent to mine too). but me being a man is also inherent to my homosexual identity. you can't separate the homophobia I face from the fact that I'm a man who loves men. but does this mean women oppress us men for being men (androphobia!), that women could never ever relate to my experiences, and I need to coin the term "homoandrophobia" ASAP because I'm clearly being oppressed so much worse than lesbians are, with their womanly privileges? no, obviously not. assuming u have a basic understanding of gender politics, that's clearly just pinkwashed incel shit. and it would be extremely stupid and misogynistic for a man to claim with sincerity, regardless of their marginalized LGBT identities.

yet that's exactly how "transandrophobia" truthers sound. and it's misogynistic as hell. I know transphobia hurts, but you don't need to reinvent meninism to talk about it. thanks for reading, sorry about the length, no one ever ask me of this again or I'm just sending u this post okbye✌️😗

ok i agree w/ everything you said about those ladies besides, lwaxana gives s*xual pr*dator vibes and that is why i dont like her.

I can see that reading for sure and all things are subjective. I do strongly disagree, but hey, fandom is a space for that! Super chill.

to go a little more into this though, since it's not really so much about what any of us feel, but more about how we engage with female characters (and I'll use your example of why you don't like her - not to drag you, your dislike is totally fair, she's fictional, she won't mind, but just because it's a single line that kinda puts her in a box. And not a very nice box to be in, that's for sure...)

a little tw for mild references to some of the shadier writings of star trek vis a vis sexual assault and otherwise sexist and/or strange relationship dynamics

okay so you know how Riker has like. two? episodes that're suuuper shady in terms of his treatment of women and the rest of the time it's pretty chill. and he's one of my favourite characters, but I have gotta skip those episodes, because whatever they were trying to do, they Did Not Succeed - and there's a reading of him that incorporates those elements and if you do you've gotta contend with the character being quite probably someone who's assaulted women.

or how Worf at times espouses sexist shit that makes me roll my eyes outta my head and you're either gonna say "I don't fucking like this character" (and again, totally fair, I've seen people who don't Vibe) or you've gotta find a way to make this work for you if you want to explore that character - or both of those things, you can dislike a character and want to write about them

Or some of the weird shit the writers have Geordi do (which, Geordi is my favourite character in TNG, but sometimes ya gotta breathe and go "the writers are fucking dumb, the writers are fucking dumb")

or - the spiritual successor of Geordi, Julian Bashir (my favourite character from DS9 - clearly I have a Type). You've gotta go: This is stupid writing. I can make it work with my own read of the character, but first and foremost The Writing Is Dumb!

Or hell, Q - since we're talking about Lwaxana and I assume her interactions with Picard and Odo, let's not forget to mention Q, both in TNG and on VOY with Janeway - some of the more urgh-inducing scenes between Q and Janeway are, I think, meant to be charming and funny? And I'm a massive QCard shipper here, okay, I actually vibe so hard with him as an alien who doesn't get shit about boundaries (this mostly with Picard, with Janeway I have gone: "Hm. This doesn't feel good" a fair few times).

or how the writers of DS9 had Garak be in a very uncomfortable relationship with Ziyal, who was a teenager, then not a teenager within much too short a span of episodes (and actress changes)

or Quark. Remember the episode in which Quark tries to get Kira's likeness so he can put it in a sex-fantasy roleplay that she did not consent to? or how there are two cold opens where his female employees are told they have to sleep with him to keep their jobs

or like... Neelix (okay, I am not a fan of Neelix anyway, but for people who are fans, there are times when you've gotta wonder what in the heck the writers are thinking - not the character, the writers)

what I'm trying to say with the post I wrote is that this same graciousness isn't offered to female characters - especially female characters of colour, but in the case of Lwaxana

she's older, she's an ongoing female guest star, she's very (sometimes uncomfortably) sexual towards especially Picard and for a short while Odo, before they become really good friends.

she's also in-text several times in positions in which men are trying to control her (the episode where she gets kidnapped, the episode in which the guy who's married her is a misogynist) and she uses or tries to use her "wiles" to escape these situations.

She's really more of a faded beauty who's putting a pressure onto her daughter (in a rare interesting, complex, fraught mother-daughter dynamic that I loooove) and refuses to let go of the past, because (and here we get into my read, but mildly supported by canon) it's the only way she seems to have learned how to be loved and have relevance. She's terrified of letting that go, because where does she go next, without everything that's defined her? which is why her final episode with Odo is actually so powerful to me.

Picard is never threatened by her in-text. He's not massively fond of her (at first, she grows on him... like a mold), he would prefer to avoid her, but he's not in a powerless situation here. She undoubtedly makes him uncomfortable at times in a way that - like some of the above examples have made me go "mmmmokay" but certainly not the worst example of this in the writing.

With Odo I also don't like how some of her interactions with him go in the first episode they're in together. But once they're friends and you see how easily she accepts him ("I can swim" is always going to be one of my favourite little chuckle lines) that no longer applies. He clearly likes her and enjoys her company. There's something incredibly lifelong platonic partners in their easiness with each other.

You can argue in both cases (and argue well) that there are scenes that are kinda sus. But there are lots of scenes that offer you depth of character. She's not one-note. She's got off moments.

Some of these guys (and others - I haven't watched as much TOS and Voyager so I don't want to misrepresent anyone, but I feel sure that Tom Paris has made me squint once or twice + I've not seen Enterprise yet) have whole episodes that make me shudder.

It's really - within this fandom for sure - open how we interpret characters and I'm not saying anyone needs to read Lwaxana like this or change their minds and like her.

The point of the post is not to say you have to like any of these characters. Or even to say you have to engage with them regardless of how you vibe or don't vibe with them. It's just... I have listened to several up-until-then-enjoyable deeply analytical podcasts where at some point one of the (guys... always guys... I'm guessing white) makes a sneering comment completely dismissing their value within the series.

My point is that Lwaxana (since we're on her) has value as a character within the Trek universe. She added something important. She's not everyone's cup of tea, but it's a big series, we're not all guaranteed to like everyone.

and in the original post I used "shrill" and "cringy" on purpose, because those are descriptors I've heard. And they are absolutely rooted in misogynist dismissals of female characters no matter what shape they take (Keiko, Lwaxana, Michael, and Ezri are radically different from each other and yet all easily brushed aside regardless of screentime, personality, show, age, role/job).

I'm not making points about having to engage with or like characters. I'm just saying we need to be aware of how easily we specifically look down our noses at female characters (and specifically female characters of colour - apologies, this was just because we were talking about Lwaxana, but some of the shit I've heard about especially Michael and Keiko have made me want to bang my head against a wall... or other peoples heads against walls... you know, for a nice change)

so how much sympathy or analysis of behaviour is afforded to female characters vs their male peers. What judgements are we making and how do they compare to our readings of their male counterparts?

sidenote: I hate using male and female about star trek, my brain is just like "why anyone gender? why do this? you're in space? there are aliens? y'all can't chill with the binary for two fucking seconds?"

different post

LEAVE LIZZO ALONE

Are you mad because a plus size black woman whom you deem traditionally unattractive is expressing sexual desire and interest in seven POC men whom you also deem sexually unattractive because they are Asian men???

Are you mad because she sees them as men and not 'small dick losers' because they are Asian men?

And can we stop acting like it is wrong for adult men and women to express sexual interest in each other?? Are you twelve???

BTS ARE DESIRABLE AND ATTRACTIVE AND SEXY AS FUCK THEY ATTRACT BOTH MEN AND WOMEN AND GAYS FUCK OFF.

"In middle and high school, acquaintances often referred to me and my twin brother as “the Asians” instead of by our names. Friends casually called us racial slurs. I brushed most of these comments off as well-intentioned, if misguided, jokes. 

But out of all of the racist comments, the ones that stung the most were those that attacked my fragile sense of adolescent masculinity: “Asian guys aren’t hot.” “They’re awkward and bad with girls.” 

At the same time, in the TV shows and movies I was watching — stuff like “South Park” and “The Hangover” series — Asian men were often the butt of jokes and never serious love interests. As a straight, cis teen, it made me think I’d never get a girlfriend. 

From a young age, it was clear to me: America doesn’t find Asian men attractive."

YOU THINK BTS CALL THEMSELVES CUTE AND SEXY BECAUSE THEY ARE EVANGELICAL SANTA CLAUSE WHO SACRIFICED THEIR SEXUALITY TO A DEITY?

You think they 'look gay' and shouldn't be getting the attention they are getting from cis straight women??

What? You only find the hypersexualization of Asian women acceptable???? You would rather the hyper desexualization of Asian men???? Does it make you uncomfortable to see a woman and not a man feel and be and act so sexually literated?

Or is it because she is an older woman. Lizzo is older than I am but I still consider her pretty young for her age bracket. I don't think she is sexualizing minors the fuck!

I don't think she is inapppropraitely imposing sexuality on BTS. If she is sexualizing other men that's another thing but these seven Asian men who get made fun of for wearing make up, for having softer skin, and often get stereotyped as gay- I approve of any one who sexualizes them with my whole chest.

IF THE SEXUALIZATION IS ALSO A POLITICAL STATEMENT I STAND BY IT.

Get your sexist, anti black, fat phobic, misogynistic, misogynioristic and phony ass off the fandom's dick.

Please educate yourself on fetishism, objectification, sexual harassment and hypersexualization which actually harms a person regardless of their gender because it reduces them to tools for sexual gratification and strips them of their humanness.

I don't think that is what Lizzo is doing with BTS.

If she is objectifying BTS well clearly THEY DON'T MIND. IT'S CALLED CONSENSUAL EXCHANGE.

IS THIS THE FACE OF SOMEONE WHO IS BEING OVERLY SEXUALIZED AND REDUCED TO AN OBJECT BY A WOMAN???

BTS WANT TO BE SEEN AS SEXY AND DESIRABLE.

Jungkook out here pushing to dance sexy choreos, popping his front buttons, JM out her giving shoulder, working his body

IF YOU ARE NOT IN THE FANDOM AND YOU DON'T KNOW SHUT UP AND LOOK YOUR FRONT

TAKE YOUT ASIAN HATING ASS AWAY

The Victim Behind the #Girlboss: Analysing the Tragedy of Dahlia Hawthorne

   **WARNING: this essay will contain mentions of pedophilia, grooming, and neglect, as well as (obviously) spoilers for Trials and Tribulations**

   Dahlia Hawthorne, as the major antagonist in Ace Attorney Trials and Tribulations, is often seen as one of the most evil villains in the series due to her multiple attempted and successful murders, as well as her targeting of Phoenix Wright and Mia and Maya Fey. She is often portrayed through fan content (as well as even in the games writing) as a cruel, heartless, and evil bitch. However, the story of Dahlia Hawthorne is one of the most tragic in the series, and I would even be so bold as to claim the reason it’s not recognized as such is due to flagrant misogyny. While perhaps not moral or excusable, her actions certainly are not without reason; and are unquestionably owed some sympathy.

EARLY LIFE

Dahlia's childhood is one of pain and neglect. Her parents certainly don't care for her. Her father saw her and Iris as a means of power and left Kurain with them when it became clear they were not of use for power. Even Iris points out that Dahlia had a neglectful childhood and never had an actual parental figure. Furthermore, Iris theorizes that it’s likely she would never committed murder had she had that support and guidance in her life.

One point brought up against Dahlia showing her “evil” in childhood is that she convinces her parents to send Iris away to Hazakura at a young age; this blatantly ignores both the reality of sibling relationships and their neglectful parents. Fighting with and getting angry at your siblings is a common experience as is wishing for them to go away. Considering her father and stepmothers' uncaring attitudes toward their children, it certainly must not have been hard to convince them to send Dahlia's twin away. Rather than being a sign of manipulation and heartlessness of a child, this event is a sign of the inability to care for their children that her parents had. This is amplified by the implication in the game that her father thought “two girls is enough”, so he would have been already biased towards sending one away as he had an older stepdaughter.

This point brought up also brings to light part of why Dahlia ends up like she is, alongside what Iris says. When a child is constantly told, whether explicitly or implied, that they are evil or cruel and value-less, it is reasonable for them to step into this role and boldly claim it. While not impossible, it shouldn't be expected of a kid to avoid evil and to be good when they've never been given the opportunity or resources to be anything BUT evil.

In addition to the neglect, it is implied that Dahlia’s father cares more for his job and the illusion of power and a perfect family than the wellbeing of his family and children. That implication is also supported by his belief that two children is enough-three would be outside what he thinks fits the perfect family. It is stated that Dahlia’s plot on Dusky Bridge is intended to “exact revenge on her father”. It is clear how a neglected and mistreated 14 year old could think it necessary to resort to such drastic measures as theft for attention and revenge.

TERRY FAWLES

   Dusky Falls, of course, is where it starts to go steeply south. Terry Fawles is 20 when he enters into a relationship with 14 year old tutoring student Dahlia. Dahlia is a victim of pedophilia and grooming un-debatably. There is no defense for Terry’s actions toward Dahlia, regardless of whether Dahlia considered the relationship mutual or not. Faking her death and consequently getting Fawles jailed may not have been a necessarily good decision when considered on its own, but is not morally wrong-for starters, it very well could have seemed a great or perhaps the only option to a traumatized 14 year old. Also, Fawles being incarcerated was a good toward society.

   Terry Fawles being manipulated into drinking poison was a good thing. That isn't necessarily proof of tragedy on Dahlia’s part, but rather an assertion I have decided to include here.

   Valerie Hawthorne’s murder should also be considered when looking at Dahlia and her actions. At first glance, her death appears to be an act motivated by selfishness and self interest-but upon deeper look, has two major motivations that make perfect sense. The first is that Valerie Hawthorne was directly complicit in Dahlia's grooming by Terry Fawles. She was part of the plan to steal the diamond that involved seducing Fawles. The second, of course, is panic. Valerie telling the truth about the events of Dusky Bridge could not only reveal Dahlia and her part in attempted theft, but also get Fawles a lighter sentence or even free once it is exposed that he didn't push Dahlia.

TRIAL(GODOT&MIA)

   Flash forward to when Dahlia is on trial. Diego Armando and Mia Fey take the defense of Terry Fawles in the murder of Valerie Hawthorne. While they are defending him on the charge of the murder of Valerie, they are still defending Dahlia’s groomer. Dahlia has every reason to hate them for this.

   Diego specifically has a way of speaking condescendingly to those around him. Most women are familiar with the humiliating and belittling experience of being talked down to by an older man. While as players it's visible that this is how Godot often speaks to other people regardless of gender(Phoenix and Ron Delite for example), a young woman on the stand would have no way of knowing this. In addition, he calls Dahlia words such as “Kitten”. Again, Dahlia is a victim of grooming and pedophilia. Like previously stated, Diego calls multiple people this; however, without this context his words come off as misogynistic and belittling at best and hostile and taunting at worst. Being talked down to and treated like this is such a viscerally humiliating and angering experience even without the life experience Dahlia has and it’s completely reasonable for her to react with vitriol. (Although likely less of a factor and of lesser relevance to the case, the judge’s treatment of her certainly couldn't have helped, despite working to her advantage at the beginning of her first trials.)

   Mia, on the other hand, does not call her these terms, but still does defend Terry Fawles. While avoiding the hostility Diego shows in his condescending nature, she presents her own hostility through viewing Dahlia as a threat from the beginning and treating her accordingly. Mia only ever truly views her through the eyes of a lawyer defending her client against a criminal, despite the twisted nature of her client and the reasoning of the perpetrator. Mia is a stubborn and vicious lawyer, and while those are not necessarily bad, they place her as Dahlias biggest threat. In addition to being a threat, Mia's open hostility inspires further anger because she treats her as suspicious and villainous from the start, just as she was as a child, as well as coming off as extremely confrontational.

   It is often less energy to pretend you were always evil from the start instead of looking back and acknowledging issues with your past and how they affect you. Pretending to be purely cruel and heartless and never anything more allows Dahlia to put up protective barriers. Her trial with Mia and Diego forces at least some of her painful past to come to light, knocking down some of her walls. It's only reasonable that Dahlia would become upset at this.

DOUG AND PHOENIX

Dahlia's treatment of Phoenix correlates to the threat he presents to her. Everything she's been building up can be ruined if he is too careless with that necklace. Similarly, Doug Swallow presented a threat when he tried to warn Phoenix. Dahlia has never had the chance to handle things in a “reasonable” way so as far as she was concerned, his murder was the only option.  

Her  murder of Doug Swallow and attempted murder of Phoenix Wright can certainly be attributed to girlboss behavior, but are also tied with everything else in her life-both in that her problems with them stem from everything thats been stacking itself since she was a child, and in that her methods of dealing with them stem from the trauma shes experienced.

IN SUM

   Dahlia's characterization as a pure villain with sole motivation of evil is one void of critical thought and sopping with misogyny. While the way Capcom sometimes writes their female characters and their villains means that it would make sense for Dahlia to be a one sided character motivated by pure cruelty and evil, the dismissal of her character cannot be fully chalked up to that. Taking into consideration the way she was raised and treated in life, growing to be manipulative with a twisted view of the world and morals is completely logical. While Dahlia Hawthorne WAS unequivocally a Girlboss, she was also a victim and her story is ultimately one of tragedy rather than depravity.

How the hell do women survive in this world?

I ask myself this question every single day and I am pretty sure other individuals ask themselves this question too. This is because profound pressure is placed on women by the system, let alone the entire world. Furthermore, women are also treated unfairly compared to men which explains the sexism and patriarchy that occurs amongst women.

Women bleed for a week or two due to menstruation. Thus, they are basically being punished from failure to become pregnant. And to make things even worse, some women, specifically young women from disadvantaged homes cannot even attend school for a few days or more due to lack of sanitary pads. This is because sanitary pads are expensive and they cannot afford to purchase them. The system has denied women the right to have access to free sanitary pads when on the other hand condoms are free and are even available in a few restrooms, yet sanitary pads have to be bought when it is not much of a choice to be on menstruation.

Some men are disgusted by women’s anatomy, yet they drool over what is in between women’s legs. When it is time for them to discuss menstruation, they believe that it is disgusting once again and that it is not manly to talk about such matters. Furthermore, some of these men do not discuss the rape topic too, because of their selfish mentality of them developing a sense of entitlement for women’s bodies for some odd yet despicable reason. Some of these men even have the ‘men/boys will be men/boys’ mentality which somehow explains that they can get over any action they do when they should be held accountable for their behavior and actions.

Most of the women, dark-skinned, to be specific do not feel adequate in the society, let alone in the entire world due to the pressure of the society promoting a lighter skin tone by the use of bleaching products. This is all because of the colourism portrayed within the media amongst some individuals but it is mostly amongst women, along with the image of a perfect, ideal body type that the media influences women to mold into. Also, most women have to deal with the patriarchy whereby they are told that they are not strong or not significant to be able to occupy professional positions in workplaces since most of the positions are occupied my males whereby women even earn a less income than men in most cases. The society portrays an image that women are viewed as less than, therefore being inferior to men. Sexism occurs too; in which it is said in a traditional perspective that women belong in the kitchen or in a domestic position – the typical gender roles. When cooking, cleaning, doing the laundry and ironing are basic skills that all individuals should learn regardless of gender. This sexism and inequality is educated when individuals are really young, that girls should wear skirts and dresses whereas boys wear shorts, pants and trousers. And on top of that, colours somehow determine gender, that blue is for boys and pink is for girls. Sports and other activities are also somehow determining factors on gender, that netball, ballet, gymnastics are sports for girls whereas basketball and soccer are for boys. Women were taught at a very young age to feel ashamed for being a girl, they are taught to cover their skins more, and to close their legs. Women have lived every single day as if they should feel guilty for being a woman. Women are taught to sit like a lady, and not to wear revealing clothes when male family members or friends are around, therefore, they are taught to dress appropriately whenever they are around men. Women are told to dress in an appropriate manner that does not draw attention; they are told not to wear provocative clothes since they would ‘look easy’; that they should not wear long clothes since they ‘won’t get a man’ if they dress like that or ‘men won’t find you sexually appealing’. Women somehow survive the cat-calling, the slurs and sexual remarks made by most men when these men firmly believe that these slurs are jokes. Some women also somehow survive one of the traumatizing events of being raped or sexually abused, and then some people would ask them ‘what were you wearing that caused him to rape you?’ and whenever women are physically abused, some people would ask them ‘what did you do wrong’ causing these women to feel guilty. Whenever women have a high body count, some men and other women would call them sluts and that they lack self-respect whereas, it is normalized for men to have a high body count and are praised for being legends. However, when women have a low body count they are called out as prudes.

Women are told not to dress provocatively since it reveals so much of their skin which leads to some men desiring their bodies and eventually sexualizing women. Some of these men are misogynistic and even feel the need to entitlement, and believe that women are sexual objects that they can control. In addition, women are also taught not to walk in the streets at night in order to avoid prying eyes that could cause harm unto them. When instead, all men should be taught not to harm people regardless of gender, that women are humans too and not sexual objects that they should feel entitled to.

At a certain age in women’s lives, they come across individuals that would ask them ‘when are you planning to get married?’ or ‘when are you starting a family of your own?’ which offends some women when they are rather focusing on their dreams and ambitions first, some do not even want to have children. Some of these women are told that they heartless and selfish when they are career-driven and are mothers at the same time, this is because of other people’s perspectives that include that these women somehow do not care about their children since they are spending more time at work.

It is clear that women are remarkable, strong and magical beings since they go through so much and even more on a daily basis yet they remain standing regardless of their everyday struggles. Women experience sexism, and the patriarchy within the society and the entire world which is obviously offensive and frustrating to deal with. At the end of the day women and men should be treated equally since they are both equals, women deserve to receive the same freedom and rights that are given to men; it is quite unfair that women have to fight for the same rights given to men. Yes, of course it is challenging but it is rather crucial for women to create a change in this world by uniting with and empowering every woman out there in order to break the chains of patriarchy, sexism, and other issues discussed above amongst women. Women run the world; after all, wa’thinta abafazi, wa’thinta imbokodo.

Hello, I remember you saying some time ago you didn't like how female characters are portrayed in (current) anime because of how annoying and, maybe, misogynistic their archetypes are. Could you maybe elaborate on this point? I feel similar but can't articulate well and always end up feeling like I'm the one being misogynistic whenever this type of subject comes up in conversation x.x Sorry if this comes up as too personal.

Sorry about the late reply, I have been busy with a conference. Also sorry, because my answer is a bit long and all over the place ^^;

This is a difficult question, especially because nowadays people like to think in black and white, and everything is so extreme, like if they don’t like something, then it must be wrong and eliminated, not to mention the policing of every content based to this – which kills diversity and dismisses personal (and gendered) preferences. What I think is really a personal preference and not exactly a general critique of female characters in anime, especially because there are many factors to consider (genre, age and gender or the target audience, cultural background, etc.), and there’s also the audience with its multiple readings.

Personally I dislike most female character types manga and anime has to give, because I’m not really a person for overly feminine and girly things. The Japanese ideal is very cutesy and it’s the standard in both media for men, women and also real life. Not just looks, there is also the behavior side of things, the cutesy, childish, girly ideal, the passivity, helplessness, pretending to be stupid, etc, and I outright hate it when female characters are treated as stupid, clumsy messes. The question is, though, is this ideal really conservative and an embodiment of the toxic patriarchal system? Actually not necessarily. They definitely originate from the oppressive system, but over the decades girls made these ideals their own, and turned them into a weapon to get what they want. Even in real life, fashion is very feminine for me, always with frills, ribbons, flitters, tons of dresses and skirts, and it’s difficult to find plain clothes without any decoration, not to mention all the cuteness in goods and stuff, but as for the behavior of girls and women, the cutesy ideal seems more like a role to be played at a certain age or for certain purposes, like getting things they want and eventually the man. A woman, who didn’t like this ideal herself defined it as “they had to play the wounded deer”. Actually women, who use this role too much and even among women, are usually hated – this is the infamous burikko.

But no matter how they were in their younger years, married women don’t use this role anymore, and they seamlessly slip into a different identity, one that rules the family and the finances with iron fist (I’m stereotyping) – nothing cutesy, helpless or stupid about that. The Japanese themselves are aware of this cutesy role, both men and women, it’s their version of cunning flirtatiousness, it’s just a very different type of flirtatiousness than in the West. For example, there is currently even a tv show enacting certain situations where this cutesy behavior is used to get the man, and the hosts rate how effective the cutesy behavior was. But while I understand intellectually that these are not necessarily misogynistic stereotypes, I have some kind of a visceral hatred for them. The above tv show makes me outright nauseous. It’s a personal preference, and I don’t think I have to like these character types. But I also don’t think they should be erased from Japanese media, and it would be a mistake trying to push my very independent Western values onto such a different culture, so I rather avoid these characters – which is not easy.

So, what does this mean for anime and manga? Both are largely determined by genres (manga more than anime), genres work with clean-cut character types, tropes, traditions and reader expectation, so there is a reason why female (and male) characters are the way they are in different genres. Male-oriented works will obviously have female characters that appeal to men even if the work doesn’t have in your face fanservice shots (though let’s face it, if it’s anime, most of them do). I don’t like these female character types, I don’t think I have to like them, they are clearly not geared toward me, but I also don’t think they shouldn’t be there in a clearly male-oriented media. Sure, there can be discussions about removing overly exploitive situations, harassment and rape or things like that, but I’m not really against letting men have their fun – because I expect to have that same freedom in media geared toward women. There are occasionally unisex anime, but usually they still serve one or the other demographic in a way, and I don’t think it’s possible to create truly unisex anime that everybody will be satisfied with – fanservice for women will always bother men, and fanservice for men will always bother women.

Shōjo manga is a more difficult question, because somewhere in the 70s romance started to focus on imperfect heroines who still got the best guy, because he loved them regardless of their imperfections (“I love you the way you are”), and since then the genre is full of the stupid, clumsy, indecisive, housewife material archetype without any dreams beyond getting the boy (or very old-school women job dreams), which does not appeal to me either, so I usually avoid most romance shōjo manga, especially the high school variant, and even most josei manga, because I don’t care for the adult version of the same with marriage as the end goal *shrug* Actually it’s not even about these things only, like, I disliked Arte too (though not shōjo manga), despite it trying (and failing) to pose as a feminist social commentary, just because the mc way annoying. Fortunately there are a lot of other types of shōjo manga as well, even with more appealing female characters or the best, without female characters (plus the whole BL scene), so it’s not all that bad, at least in manga, not so much in anime. Interestingly, I’m much more compatible with shōjo manga by fujoshi artists. If I like a shōjo manga, usually the artist ends up coming out as a fujoshi after a while by posting BL fanart on her twitter or drawing outright BL manga – it’s been a pattern XD

Anime is more difficult, but I also admit, that my tastes might be extreme. In Japan there are many female fans who love the cute female characters of male-oriented media. Many women like Love Live, for example, because the girls are, I quote, “so cuuuuuute” – while I am fighting nausea… Yeah, Japan is imbued with cute. It’s especially difficult, because I’m usually not willing to watch a series even if there are such female characters in supporting roles or as a second protagonist with male characters I would love to see (Cop Craft was a recent-ish example). And while I avoid female only casts on principle, sometimes there are surprises. For example, the Yashahime anime has terrible writing, but I don’t hate the three main female characters (even if occasionally the anime has some iffy things to say about femininity).

I also mentioned multiple readings. It is important to note that the audience does not necessarily interpret everything the same, especially if there are cultural differences. One of the most famous examples for this is Sailor Moon, which was the incarnation of girl power and emancipation in the West in the 90s, but it has the same “dumb heroine gets the dream guy” trope, and the same conservative message of getting married and giving birth to children as any average shōjo manga, and the same “so cuuuuute” packaging. It really depends on the audience what they get away with.

All in all there are preferences, genre conventions, cultural differences, so the whole thing is quite difficult. But I don’t think you need to be worried about not liking or being uncomfortable with certain character types. And it would be a stretch to consider tastes like mine, for example, misogynistic. Sure, even in real life I make a wide berth around overly girly or feminine women (among others), but it can’t be helped, you can’t like and be friends with everyone, and I guess they wouldn’t like me or wanting to be my friend either. And that’s fine, and I don’t think it’s misogynistic for me to reject certain types of femininity for myself and to interact with, as long as I don’t want to erase or invalidate them, or deem them as inferior – and I don't. Of course, this is the attitude I expect towards myself as well. Live and let live 🖖

Why I’m a Leftist

I know I’m probably just some dude who reblogs cool stuff to most of my followers but I’ve got a nice long story/rant about my political beliefs here that I’ve been wanting to write for awhile

I am a leftist first and foremost because I value human life. Everyone matters. No person is inherently more important than another person. Everyone has inherent rights that should not be infringed. People who infringe on other’s rights are morally wrong to do so. In essence my leftism is based on doing what is right. Obviously everyone has their own opinion on what is right but what is vitally important is knowing why your moral code is right. This is why so many people become liberals or conservatives or otherwise rather than leftists. They simply do not know enough about how the world works. There are a lot of reasons they don’t know, not the least of which is intentional covering up history and preventing education. I don’t believe people who aren’t leftists are stupid, but I do believe leftists know more. It’s kinda fucked up but it’s the only way you can explain inconsistencies in other’s values.

My path to leftism was full of cringe. When i was 7 years old Al Gore was running against George Bush for president. I did not know enough to have a real opinion on it but I am happy to say that I wanted Al Gore to win. This thought was based on very little if any logical reason. I basically flipped a coin in my head I think. Or maybe there was some outside influence that I wasn’t aware of, like my older sister who I looked up to might have said she liked Al gore. Either way, from then on I was in favor of democrats and did not like George Bush. When 9/11 happened I remembered thinking how dumb it was that people lined up around the block to get gas. Even as a child I knew that some buildings going down wasn’t going to end the great nation of the United States. In general I thought the United States was a great country. I knew from movies and tv as well as elementary school history that the United States was the most powerful country in the world. 

I recall in Sixth grade my teacher mentioned she liked George Bush because he was against gay marriage. Somehow at the time my opinion was the opposite despite being raised Catholic. I believed in god until I graduated high school and suddenly my desire to be religious slipped away and so did my belief. I do not consider this a great loss. 

Sometime in middle school or early high school I had solidified my opinion that the war in Iraq and Afghanistan was pointless and George Bush was a bad president. I was heavily influenced by movies and somewhat by video games that had imparted plenty of anti-war messages. Talks with my dad about nuclear missiles, watching History channel shows about world war 2, and playing Metal Gear Solid which had explicit nuclear disarmament messages, all informed me on the horrors of war. This was not enough to make me totally anti-military. In high school I wanted to join the military because I thought it was an easy way to get life experience and eventually pay for college. I was attracted to the Marines because of how cool movies like The Rock and video games like Call of Duty made it seem to be a Marine. I thought they were the best of the best. I was simultaneously against war, against veteran worship, and very pro-military. I was indoctrinated by years of government propaganda but also disillusioned by all forms of media including the book All Quiet on the Western Front which was about a soldier becoming disillusioned by witnessing horrors of war and the negative impact it had on everyone in his country. I spoke with a recruiter during my senior year and expressed my desire to be a Marine but I told him I wanted to wait a year after high school so I could get physically fit enough. The recruiter did not care that I was underweight and out of shape. He didn’t even care that I was very enthusiastic about joining, he was still putting on his best salesman demeanor which made me incredibly uneasy. The experience is supposed to pressure people into signing up on the spot, I think they even had forms for me to sign (i can’t really remember though) but I was not ready and was aware enough how I was being manipulated although not entirely cognizant. After that I no longer wanted to be in the military.

I also have to point out that I grew up in an unstable household. My parents were both loving but they were flawed and made mistakes and had problems. My dad was a typical Gen x man’s man. A little bit too emotionally repressed, but actually really good with kids when it came to play time and still is. He worked a lot because my mother couldn’t. My mother has been diagnosed with bipolar disorder as long as I can remember. Her medical bills related to her problems combined with other financially bad decisions by my parents caused my home life to be fraught. I lived in varying degrees of poverty until my parents separated and me and my siblings moved with my mother to her parents’ house away from my father. Prior to moving though, we endured great financial difficulty. We were unable to afford school lunches but could not apply for free or reduced lunches because technically my father made a lot of money, however it was all garnished for medical bills. My father always tells about how he bought a car that had hidden frame damage and when he attempted to sue the dealership for selling a bad car he lost and was garnished for that as well. Despite making over 25 dollars an hour in 1999, my father could not afford school lunches for three kids and couldn’t afford to pay the gas bill. Without going into too much more detail, life sucked and continued to suck until I graduated, at least financially. I still found plenty of joy and it wasn’t always that bad. We still found ways to have good things like video games and we could always rewatch old movies but there’s a lot of psychic weight that comes with being that poor as a child and I’m sure it affects me and my ability to empathize with others who in bad conditions. 

So i watched a lot of movies and documentaries, read a lot of books growing up, discovered internet forums at the age of 11, played video games, moved to a town that had a very large Hispanic population, and I even grew up poor. All of this life experience turned me into a very average liberal upon graduating high school. I was a very optimistic 18 year old. I thought science could save the world. If I was 18 today I would be an average redditor stereotype probably. The point here though is I still wasn’t a leftist. Only vaguely progressive and full of optimism. This is when I got sucked into the anti-feminist pipeline.

I can’t remember what exactly what I had going on in my life but I remember it was around the time of Gamergate. Everyone on the internet, celebrities, and pop culture were saying “if you believe in equality between genders you’re a feminist” an did not like that. And there was a ton of people online to tell me I was right in not liking that. They all said feminism was not necessary anymore because legally you couldn’t discriminate against women and I agreed. Gamergate made it worse for reasons too complicated to get into in this already long post but suffice it say I was “pro Gamergate.” This put me at odds with my closes friends who thought feminism was great and had no qualms with it, and were already embracing the idea of being a “social justice warrior.” Despite reading all kinds of anti-feminist think pieces and reveling in the discourse, I was still very progressive and liberal minded person. Still thought the military was bad, that black people were discriminated against etc. But so many aspects of anti-feminism were appealing to me as a white guy who tried their hardest to do what they’re told is right, had low self esteem, undiagnosed adhd and depression, and a fundamental misunderstanding of what feminism was. Two things got me out of anti-feminism though. The first and most important thing was having friends who were patient with me about it. I didn’t reveal how into anti-feminism I was because I was ashamed but they could sense it and pushed back when they could. The second thing that got me out of it was actually finding feminists online and reading what they had to say, staying away from poorly written clickbait articles that fueled misogynist tirades against feminism. After reading and learning from feminists it finally clicked. Our society is patriarchal and that affects how people interact with each other regardless of what is legal. Many of the complaints of anti-feminism talk about how men have it in society, so how can society be patriarchal. It’s because of patriarchy that men are put in bad positions. Some of the more self aware anti-feminists had retorts against these ideas but they were emotionally charged. There’s still some anti-feminists I have respect for because of how well prepared and logical they were when it came to disputing feminism. But when it came down to the fundamental tenants of feminsim all they could respond with was anger or outright denial of reality. (If you’re like I was and don’t understand how anyone can thing modern feminism is good please feel free to ask me more, I just can’t get into specifics in this long ass post) Anyways, once you understand patriarchy and how it affects an individuals actions then you can start seeing how other institutions and cultural norms can affect an individual. This is basically fundamentals of leftism. I’d say about 90% of my path to leftism was just naturally absorbing cultural and historical information through consumption of media. The most conservative people I know are people who haven’t read very many books or seen very many movies. I’m not saying watching Austin Powers at the age of 10 will make everyone a leftist but constantly recontextualizing the world by learning something new, even if you learned it from some dumb comedy movie, can give you better grounding in a shared reality.  Don’t know how to end this but I want to say when I was a teenager I thought “communism is good in theory but it doesn’t work in practice” and I had almost no historical basis for it other than the vague notion that USSR = bad despite having consumed a massive amount of media. None of it taught me what communism actually was, I didn’t know who Karl Marx was, and I had no clue why communism in the USSR failed. You can know a lot without knowing the truth so if you’re struggling with a loved one who is mind poisoned by conservative keep in mind that they know a lot but they’re missing something important to give clarity. 

This has been my Ted Talk

I am not an oracle fyi, this is just what I have gathered so far and if I am wrong about anything or say anything insensitive, please correct me and I’ll better myself to be a greater ally, because even though I’m queer/fluid, I don’t know the struggles of being trans/gnc firsthand x

Transwomen are women. Ciswomen are women. Transmen are men. Cismen are men. Nonbinary folk are not men or women.

Yet they are all valid.

Firstly, to define a woman by the biological functions of ciswomen is not only cruel, but a disguised act of transphobia.

Not all ciswomen have wombs. Not all ciswomen menstruate. Not all ciswomen go through the menopause. So already this definition is flawed.

Your gender identity does not rely on these.

The concept that the acknowledgement of transpeople is dangerous to cispeople, specifically ciswomen, is atrocious. Allowing transwomen to use the restroom/changing room that they identify with should be common sense but instead transphobes twist the sick tale that it is dangerous. That transwomen will assault ciswomen in those places, or that men will dress as women to get in there to assault ciswomen. It is cruel to deny basic rights to transpeople just because of the most sick people in society who might abuse it. Transwomen are not a danger to ciswomen. Transmen are not a danger to cismen. Nonbinary folk are not a danger to cispeople.

I also find this argument ridiculous for the fact that it recognises that the problem is not transwomen, but cismen who assault people. So how about instead of discriminating against the trans community, we address the issue of cismen harrassing/assaulting/raping people. That’s the real issue there. Instead of denying transpeople their right to exist and teaching people that it is wrong to be trans/nonbinary, teach people not to rape.

Another argument I have seen claims that the acknowledgment of the trans community and nonbinary community erases the struggles/experiences of ciswomen. This is also not true. We know about women’s suffrage, it is an incredible part of world history and therefore cannot be erased. By allowing transwomen, this does not erase modern struggles/experiences either. I assure you. There are still struggles facing women in this day and age but transwomen will not take that away. They face their own struggles/experiences on account of gender identity, such as this one you have created for them. Ciswomen will still face discrimination on account of their gender, just like transwomen do, so why aren’t we working together to create equality among everyone regardless of gender? Unless that isn’t what these transphobes want.

Moreover, I’ve seen the argument that the acknowledgment of transpeople erases the identity of cispeople. Again, this isn’t the case. Nobody is saying that a ciswoman is not a woman and that a cisman is not a man. Because they are that. But also transwomen are women and transmen are men. They are not a threat to cismen and ciswomen. Because the rights granted to the trans community and nonbinary community are not rights taken away from the cis community. That’s not how it works; it just means that there are more rights. What it does mean however, is that cispeople lose the unfair privilage they have by identifying with their born gender and the world becomes a more equal place because certain people don’t benefit from the discrimination and oppression of other people on account of gender. To say that you don’t accept transgender or nonbinary identities is to say that you want to maintain the privilage you get from their oppression, and therefore do not want gender equality. And that’s not okay, so we will continue to point out your insensitive, discriminatory actions and comments until we reach equality which we deserve.

Additionally, it is not misogynistic to point out these behaviours, i.e the case regarding JK Rowling. It is not misogynistic to argue with one ciswoman for her blatantly discriminatory views. By correcting her, we do not diminish her identity as a woman, for she is one, and we do not criticise on the basis of her gender. We also do not criticise with the intention of discrediting all women, as she does not speak for all women. We criticise on the basis that she is oppressing the gender identity of so many, including so many that previously looked up to her. And it is not misogynistic to do so. Also JK, nobody is saying that sex doesn’t exist, we are simply providing the distinction between sex and gender as they are different, even though your sex and gender are both female. And TERF isn’t a slur by the way so it’s also not misogynistic to say because Trans Exclusionary Radical Feminists do not actually fight for equality.

To the trans/gender nonconforming community, you are loved, you are supported, and you are valid !

I think this was pretty much everything I wanted to say, and if you identify as trans or nonbinary and I’ve said something wrong, please correct me because I just want to be the best ally I can for you 💜 !

After the first episode of "The Mandalorian," the Disney Plus series in the Star Wars universe that became the top streaming hit of 2019, aired on the platform, some Twitter users expressed frustration at how few women spoke, and how few female characters there were in general.

Some of those who tweeted, including well-known feminist critic Anita Sarkeesian, were met with dogpiling and waves of harassment across social media platforms. 

The harassment largely stemmed from anti-feminist Star Wars fan accounts who rounded up and highlighted tweets under the pretense that those complaining were "outraged" social justice warriors trying to tear down a successful Star Wars franchise.

The harassment is just the latest instance of feminist fandom voices being shut down online.

Anita Sarkeesian is no stranger to online harassment,

YEA SHES VERY GOOD AT MAKING THEM.

 being one of the central figures in Gamergate, the online harassment campaign that resulted in her receiving numerous death and rape threats, along with bomb and shooting threats at her events. But even she was surprised at the amount of vitriol her tweet about "The Mandalorian" received.

After watching the first episode of the Star Wars series for Disney Plus, Sarkeesian tweeted asking if she was just tired, or if there wasn't "a single female speaking character in the first episode."

She was exhausted, Sarkeesian told Insider — missing the one scene where a woman spoke and making a typo in her tweet. In the replies, Sarkeesian corrected herself. Then she went to bed. In the morning, the tweet had more than 3,000 replies. It currently has close to 7,000.

"Maybe you should switch to The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills... I'm sure you'll find much to relate to there...." one top reply read.

"No wonder you're so tired. They say you should stretch before making such reaches, especially at your age," said another, with more than 1,400 likes of its own.

It's an example of dogpiling, a type of online harassment where, on Twitter, someone's replies outnumber likes and retweets, and are mostly filled with repetitive, hurtful comments.

"It's ironic. Women, especially feminists, get accused of being emotional and angry and all of these things when all we said was 'Hey, I noticed this thing. And it's kind of a problem, and I think it's really bad for our society,'" Sarkeesian told Insider. "If they didn't reply to it, my tweet would have just been gone. They made it a much bigger deal."

Sarkeesian is the most prominent figure facing dogpiling and harassment in response to her criticism of the series, but she's not the only one.

People with and without large Twitter followings, some who are verified and many who are not, have found themselves overwhelmed with anti-feminist replies and messages across platforms after tweeting about how few women are in "The Mandalorian."

Specifically, in the first episode, there's one female character wearing a mask who speaks, and two female characters total, along with a few women spotted as extras in the background of shots. More female characters are expected to play larger roles in future episodes.

"Even if you want to give the show the benefit of the doubt and say there's some big, wild justification that's going to come around in episode 7, it feels wrong that the vast majority of this world is populated by men or male-identified characters," Sarkeesian said.

Star Wars fans have a history of harassing women online when faced with criticism

Online harassment in the Star Wars fandom, particularly of women, is nothing new. Actresses like Daisy Ridley and Kelly Marie Tran of the latest Disney-owned Star Wars trilogy have recently talked about the negative aspects of the Star Wars community.

Ridley, who stars in the newest Star Wars trilogy as Rey, "cut off" her Facebook and Instagram accounts "like a Skywalker limb" due to harassment, and Tran faced racist and misogynistic harassment after appearing as the first woman of color in a leading role in the Star Wars franchise.

"It wasn't their words, it's that I started to believe them," Tran wrote for The New York Times after deleting her Instagram posts in 2018. "Their words seemed to confirm what growing up as a woman and a person of color already taught me: that I belonged in margins and spaces, valid only as a minor character in their lives and stories."

In the case of "The Mandalorian," almost anyone who tweets about the show from a feminist perspective is at risk of being targeted, because Star Wars fan accounts are rounding up tweets that criticize things like the amount of time it took for a woman to speak in the first episode.

One account rounded up 33 of these tweets with the caption "SJW's are outraged over the 'lack of female characters' in the first 2 episodes of The Mandalorian. A show with 3 female characters. Feminists only care about counting the number of minutes women are on screen in Star Wars."

Insider spoke with two people whose tweets were featured in the round-up, who said their tweets were mischaracterized, inspiring a wave of online hate.

Both of the people who spoke with Insider said they liked "The Mandalorian" and will continue watching it, but wanted to point out that it could be better in terms of female representation.

One woman who spoke to Insider anonymously, because she is trying to distance her name from the situation, says the harassment began several days after she posted her initial tweet about a lack of women in the first episode.

After receiving anti-feminist replies on Twitter, she also started getting harassed across platforms, in part because other anti-feminist Star Wars accounts picked up screenshots of her tweet after it was first included in the round-up and distributed to an even wider audience, including on Instagram.

One person even left a violent message for her in the email submission form on her professional website. It reads "People like you don't deserve a f---ing opinion, but at least I'm glad you can voice it. Doesn't prevent me from calling you f---ing r-----ed for spouting your misandry. HOW DOES IT F---ING FEEL C---? I hope you expire and never have children."

"I had to put everything on private, for my own mental health," she told Insider. "I just had to shut down my profile. I will never, ever, ever tweet about Star Wars again. And I love baby Yoda so much. But I can't. They won. Life's too short for me to fight this fight."

Even after setting her accounts to private, she was inundated by hundreds of follow requests on Twitter, along with DMs sent to her private Instagram.

Those who tweeted about female representation in 'The Mandalorian' stand by their words, despite the harassment

The person who tweeted the round-up of critics didn't want to share any identifying information with Insider, but did stand behind the tweet, and said they didn't participate in or encourage harassment, but the reach of the account became clear once Insider asked for comment in the replies. Within a few hours, a video had been uploaded about this article (which had not been written yet) to YouTube from a channel with more than 130,000 subscribers.

The video in question has been viewed more than 33,000 times and highlights the mentality in at least one corner of the Star Wars fandom that is male-dominated and is aggressive toward diverse media representation.

"What SJWs do is as soon as this kind of thing happens, they identify [the Twitter account that posted the round-up] as hostile to their narrative [...] I would call them left-wing garbage," the voiceover of YouTuber ComicArtistPro Secrets says in the video. "They are going to come in and write an article smearing [the Twitter account], 'Don't you dare shine a light on these cockroaches in such an effective way ever again,'" The YouTuber mocked, referring to the feminist critics as the "cockroaches" in the situation.

"This is a strategy that these sorts of anti-progressive, very regressive cyber mobs have used for years," Sarkeesian said. "They try to use social justice language against us when we try to bring these issues up but it's so transparent and so obvious what they're trying to do, by undermining our point. It's very bad faith."

Writer and programmer David Ely, a male who's tweet was included in the roundup, told Insider that his replies were pretty tame in comparison to Sarkeesian and the other woman Insider spoke to, although he did receive one unspecified death threat from an account that he blocked.

"Part of the response seems to come from a belief that Star Wars needn't be political. That it be pure entertainment," Ely told Insider. "Star Wars is a made-up universe. If gender inequality exists there, it's either on purpose, or because the creator's biases meant they didn't notice it. Either way, that's political."

Sarkeesian also stood by her original point that "The Mandalorian" should have more female characters, and said a lot of the negative response was because there's so much pushback from people who have historically been over-represented on the screen, and are hostile to the changing expectations for diverse characters that represent the diverse Star Wars fanbase.

"We are so accustomed to male-dominated narratives that it's easy to not even notice glaring omissions," she said. "Unlike if the entire cast had been women, I suspect everyone would have immediately noticed that regardless of what one's opinion would be on that casting choice."

MAYBE ITS NOT FOR YOU ANITA....

The iPhone afterlife. Your next iPhone will cost much more. There are only two obvious ways to lose money: charity and stupidity. Leftism works by appealing to charity of stupidity-prone drones. From feminization of the general populace to European Union endorsement of Syrian invaders, Western governments have successfully metamorphosed from charitable to cuckold. The European youth need some deep introspection to solve this infiltration and betrayal, as do us Americans.

The American public has been sold out by its politicians, wealthy elite, and professional victims. But before we solve any social and cultural issues, we must first solve the American economy. After all, how can we revert to genuine charity when nobody has any money? Here are the five steps to reinvigorating the American economy:

1. Reduce “Made in China” imports and strive for a trade surplus

Factory manager holding monthly Walmart orders. For Chairman Mao!

There is common paranoia that our new Chinese overlords are inevitable. We run trade deficits with China so habitually that American defeatists just cry their way to Walmart. Of course, people always think the grass is greener in foreign pastures. The truth is that China is anticipating its own Baby Boomer pension collapse. During Mao’s “Great Leap Forward”, Chinese birth rates soared to meet his agricultural and manufacturing ambitions. He wanted each Chinese household to farm and smelt iron.

Mao’s economic policy failed, and China eventually enacted single child policies to relieve future pension burdens. It was too late. These Chinese Baby Boomers are now supported by China’s export-based trade surpluses. The Chinese are racing against nature’s hourglass, similar to our impending Social Security crisis. In order to avoid collapse, the Chinese economy depends on producing Gap khakis and Walmart toys, while rushing to switch to developed services such as finance and technology.

How does this relate to America? Our consumption of cheap textiles, toys and televisions is feeding their Maoist Baby Boomers. While nations like China operate on currency depreciation and mercantilist behavior, Western nations foolishly prop onto the moral pedestal of “free trade.” Western nations used mercantilism from the 1500’s until abandoning it after WWI.

Once we pull the carpet from under the Chinese and balance our trade ledgers, their welfare and pension bubble will pop. Once America revitalizes its manufacturing bases, the Chinese bubble of cheap export goods will burst. China will meet the same fate as late Rome.

How can we achieve this? The American government must offer tax incentives to corporations who shore employment to American workers. Forced employer-provided services, such as Obamacare, must be suspended. Finally, we must collect punishing tariffs on Chinese imports until they properly revalue their currency. It is time to play rough once again.

2. Reallocate foreign policy funds to subsidize nuclear power and renewable energy sources

Greatest place to build a nuclear power plant? The nation where four tectonic plates meet, of course!

Humanitarian aid and offering asylum are noble efforts, but should have no priority in times of economic turmoil. The most useful is energy, the fuel and lubricant of every economy. Israel loves boasting about their strength and independence, right? So American dollars are just scraps to them. If they are truly great allies of the American people, won’t they forgive that we can’t spare any missiles this fiscal year?

Liberals wet themselves over everything European, right? Well, the French get over 80% of their electricity from nuclear fission. Are Americans paranoid about nuclear power because of the Chernobyl and Fukushima disasters? Firstly, engineered products of Communist regimes were always of infamously low-quality. Chernobyl was the result of “socialize losses, privatize profits.”

After all, why should an industrial firm under Communism innovate or guarantee product quality, when state owned enterprising dictates that failure is rewarded with research subsidies? Fukushima was in Japan, a nation atop multiple tectonic fault-lines, so an earthquake-induced disaster was inevitable.

The French have a perfect track record with nuclear power plants. Nuclear power plants should utilized within inland states free of frequent natural disasters. The coastal and riverside states should receive research and construction subsidies for hydroelectric and tidal energy plants.

3. Strictly enforce immigration policies

She’s here for some English learning. If you don’t support it, you’re a misogynist.

All illegal immigrants share two characteristics. Firstly, they have propensity to break the law, as their presence is already evidence of laws already violated. How can I depend on a neighbor to be well-behaved, when they broke the rules to become my neighbor? Secondly, their presence skews economic and logistical calculations. Although they are not legal citizens, their presence interferes with census data, district allotment, and native wages. I won’t even start on the high rate at which they receive welfare.

Now contrast this with the characteristics of a foreign student graduating from an American university. A graduating student obviously bothered to learn the English language. This graduating student has shown an ability to pay (or will pay) tens of thousands of dollars of tuition, as well as ensure enough earning potential to not receive welfare.

However, we are rolling foreign students through our prestigious universities before forcing them back to their home countries. This process of “brain drain” is moronic and suicidal. Why do we expel the intelligent, stable, and studious members, while ignoring potential criminals entering our borders? We should therefore offer work visas or citizenship to foreign exchange students graduating from American universities.

4. Encourage electronics recycling within the United States

While we are distracted by subjective issues such as “equality” and “patriarchy,” there is an investment that garners no attention—American supply of precious metals. Precious metals, such as gold, copper, and lithium are found in everything. American manufacturing is based on highly sophisticated goods, such as Boeing aircraft.

As we demand smarter smartphones and missiles that fly further, demand for computer chips will skyrocket. However, for a pretty view and cheaper disposal costs, American electronics are dumped into Asian and African landfills. This is an issue where only pictures can show the magnitude:

There’s more copper in that bowl than all the pennies in the USA.

The iPhone afterlife. Your next iPhone will cost much more.

This bounty should have been ours. We are playing them dollars and precious metals, to charge us more dollars later.

Those foreign recycling firms scavenge and recycle these precious metals and resell them to American manufacturers at a decent markup. As these landfill nations emerge, they will either a) hoard these precious metals for domestic technology firms, or b) hoard these precious metals and charge American firms monopoly prices. If you think a replacement battery for your laptop is expensive now, how much will it cost if China’s landfills held 70% of the world’s lithium reserves?

5. Abolish affirmative action quotas based on ethnicity and gender

A woman trying to be even less productive.

The original purpose of affirmative action was in education for African Americans, rightfully justified by atrocities committed by a subset of Southern agriculturalists. It eventually included women and Latin Americans. Nowadays it has become the Olympiad of Victim-hood.

Let’s examine Rachel Dolezal. She was the white woman who tanned and changed her hairstyle for positions in Howard University and NAACP:

Leftists say race is a human construct and not real. All races are therefore equal.

Rachel Dolezal wasn’t allowed be Black. Leftists insist on separating Black and white.

“Separate, but equal” is also known as segregation.

So affirmative action is segregation.

Affirmative action disincentivizes both the “privileged” and “victim.” The “privileged” won’t be productive because of the threat of being displaced or plundered. The “victim” will receive the spoils of plunder or displacement regardless of productivity. The country thus loses two shares of productivity, all for some fairy-tale rendition of fairness, equality and sparkling unicorns. The American government needs to gradually abolish affirmative action policies, and start heading for meritorious rewards.

Conclusion

All these steps encourage self-dependence, abandoning unnecessary burdens, and accumulating resources for the future. We need a long-term energy source, a domestic manufacturing base and precious raw material. We cannot afford foreign aid, providing economic asylum or pandering to victim-hood.

I’m not saying to abandon charity or sympathy for the unfortunate, simply that it is dangerous for a government to contort economic outcomes for its own ideal of charity. It is time for America to stop feeding from the cauldron of guilt stirred by the Leftists. It is time for America to rise again.

Read More: Why The American Economy Needs The Beta Male

Our understanding of the beta male’s status as an underappreciated, and downright derided figure in modern American society is reasonably well developed, but what is his true utility? While an answer to this question has been touched on before, I posit that an even clearer resolution can be found through an examination of the modern American system’s consumerist imperative.

Our society starts adhering to this consumerist imperative by promoting the growth of rampant materialism amongst Americans from an early age, with the media as a main tool. Young Americans learn early on that “bigger is better,” regardless of whether it actually is. A celebrity-centric, materialist culture heavily focused on spending and the trappings of it (as well as how to look like you have it) is the result. Add American culture’s uniquely competitive and adversarial nature to this and you’ve got an even bigger phenomenon, with Americans all striving to outdo one another in this materialistic effort (“Keeping up with the Jones,” or Kardashians) and spending money they don’t have in the process.

Then the society uses a host of clichéd but heavily romanticized tropes about the “American experience” that are designed to reinforce all of this.

The first important trope is “The American Dream” (sizable suburban home, some land, fence, two $30,000+ cars, etc.), which is romanticized to an extent that many Americans can’t be satisfied with anything less as a long term goal. That, combined with the promotion of the rabid materialism mentioned earlier, makes them susceptible to overspending in order to reach that goal, ensuring that they never have much to save. Of course, thanks to the promotion of the trope, most Americans still feel it is all worth it even if they can’t afford it and go into debt.

Then you have another important trope involving work ethic. This stems from America’s puritanical roots, and is a key reason why Americans work more and vacation less than almost anyone else in the developed world. This is the type of trope that keeps the average American worker bee laboring almost constantly.

All of these things, combined, help to ensure that the average American is always spending, never saving, and constantly producing with relatively less leisure. The wage slave, the majority of the USA’s populace, can’t save and thus can’t stop working. The average American is, in essence, a slave to consumerism.

The tropes noted are particularly important, since they essentially cover the bases even for most of the minority of Americans who earn more (upper middle class or above) and could in theory end up saving more. Because materialism and consumerism are so heavily promoted and “bigger is always better,” those who make more rarely use the surplus to save or build any real wealth—they just spend more.

Thus, you have a game in which nobody really wins. Even when you do “win” (read: succeed as a capitalist and gain a high income), you end up losing because you spend it all trying to outdo everyone else and live up to the materialistic ideals that have most likely been drilled into you (and if the consumerist impulse doesn’t get them, then absurdly high school debts will). In the end, even a good number of these high-earning individuals have nothing more to show for it than those below their income level (unless, of course, they’re aware of these tropes, which most Americans aren’t).

This is actually kind of an intricately brilliant formula, and would probably do wonders for anybody at the top of society looking to maintain hegemony. Such individuals may maintain an ethos of inter-generational wealth (read: controlled spending, prudent wealth-building investment, etc.) that preserves their status and allows them to maintain control of America’s financial and industrial life.

This entire system counts on one crucial piece, however, without which things would likely grind to a halt.

The Indispensable Beta Male

Seeing through the rigged nature of the sexual marketplace is as hard as seeing through the larger economic game. In fact, I think a lot of the tropes associated with our modern sexual marketplace are intimately related with the consumerist and materialist tropes we’ve been talking about. Yes, it is true that the vast majority of the grunt work that keeps the foundations of our society sound (e.g. infrastructure maintenance, defense, law enforcement, etc) is carried out by beta males. I’ve written about that before, but the beta’s usefulness to the economic system goes well beyond that.

Married men make for vastly superior wage slaves, and the beta male is the most common and most useful of all married men—they form the backbone of this entire system. Their instilled “duty” to their wives and family is easily co-opted and exploited to fit the rigged materialist game. Now it is not just about competing with other individuals, but rather outdoing other families (bigger houses, two or three nicer cars in driveway, bigger vacations, better and more expensive private schools, etc.). The element of family just makes the stakes a lot higher, and it is the beta’s support that makes such an increase possible: his labor and devotion facilitate vastly greater sums of expenditure (he’s got a lot more to pay for), while subsequently freeing those he supports (wife and children) to focus almost entirely on consumption. He’s doing all of the producing, ensuring that they are free to lay back and take more than they give without much thought.

The ability of a betatized and married man to see through the game and avoid its pitfalls is much lower than that of a disconnected single guy, especially when said single guy is anything like Roosh, Heartiste, or any other number of manosphere men. Because he is a devoted beta, he’ll see few other options aside from slaving away into eternity and going into debt to provide the American Dream for those he loves, who are free to benefit immensely from said labor and consume absent much thought to how much of a contribution they themselves will make.

The game knows that the consumerist ethos it promotes is especially effective on women, who shop and consume more often and more leisurely than men do and are much more wary of their social status relative to one another (which means they’ll want to compete more with other women, spending more in order to do so). Modern marriage serves to link the beta male to these women. Result? He is likely to face a lot more pressure from his wife to push further and further (bigger house, money for shopping, bigger cars), pressure he’d be less compelled to give in to as a carefree bachelor. Women are often a little less willing than the average guy to drop out of the consumer culture and generally more willing to invest deeply in it. By linking these women with devoted betas who are willing to provide at all costs, the game helps to keep men in the fold more firmly. If those men were on their own, they’d be far less likely to play.

The presence of a wife will also make it more likely that more of his income goes into consumer purchases than it would on his own. Women do much of the shopping in these families, and thus control how much of total household income is spent. All of this is key to keeping the worker bee in line, and also ensuring that there will be more future worker bees (kids = much more money spent come Christmas time and many other occasions = even more indebted and dependent worker bees = profit).

In the case of divorce? The game has a simple solution: shift laws in women’s favor so as to guarantee that, more often than not, they will garner a larger sum of the male’s income (alimony, punitive child support, etc.). The game realizes that women are more prone on average to their message of consumerism, so it seeks to ensure that a decent sum of money still remains in their hands in all scenarios.

Thus, the sexual marketplace is geared to create more married, beta males and, in doing so, shift a larger portion of the nation’s money supply into the direct or indirect control of those more likely to spend it (women). The game needs devoted, married betas in order to work, and they’re the main force holding it all together. If too many men start going their own way and forgoing marriage (and the expensive duties now intimately linked to the institution), the game might lack for players.

Will enough of the male population remain invested in order to keep everything going? This remains to be seen.