A friend of mine on FB wrote this and, with their permission, told me that I could share it. I got more than a bit choked up reading it. Enjoy.
I’m 6 years old, and I’m Luke Skywalker, blowing up the Death Star in his X-Wing and using the Force… until I go outside to play Star Wars with the neighborhood kids, and I’m told I can’t be Luke because I’m a girl. I have to be Leia instead. Nothing wrong with Leia, but she’s the girl. She’s my only option, otherwise, I’m not allowed to play.
I’m 7 years old, and I’m She-Ra, with a pegasus and sword and… and no one wants to play She-Ra, because He-Man is better, stupid girl, duh. No boy wants to play a girl character. Duh. Stupid girl.
I’m 8 years old, and I’m Liono, with the Sword of Omens, telling me the future and defeating my enemies… until I can’t, because I’m a girl. I have to be Cheetara, even though I don’t like to run around really fast. She’s the girl. She’s my only option.
I’m 10 years old, and I’m a Ninja Turtle. I have these cool weapons and know martial arts… until I can’t be, because I’m a girl. I have to be April. She doesn’t get to do much, but she’s the girl. She’s my only option. If the other girl wants to play, she gets to be April, and I’m out, because she’s prettier.
I’m 14 years old, and my father yells at me again to stop being such a girl. Stop being weak. Stop being stupid. Stop being you.
I’m 17 years old, and set foot in a comic shop for the first time, only to be told girls don’t read comics. I must just be trying to impress my boyfriend. I don’t even get to ask if they had that book I read part of, with the beautiful woman who was Death, who saved a teenage boy.
I’m 24, and I’m Jean Grey, the powerful Phoenix, but turned into some weird Scarlet Witch hybrid who must die at the hands of Wolverine, because Logan just needed a little more angst.
I’m 28 and I’m Commander Shepard at the helm of the Normandy, but just having the OPTION of a female player character sends hordes of men into a blind rage, intent on stamping out any joy I might derive from this. I have to mute tons of keywords online and play in friends-only groups if I want to avoid being called a cunt for the sin of logging into multiplayer with a female avatar.
I’m 32 and I get a job running a comic shop. I tell my boss I’d like to have ladies nights. He asks, “But when is men’s night?”
I’m 33 and I’m Rey, facing down Kylo and digging deep to survive, despite being terrified. I’ve been fighting my whole life, though, and I manage to get out of it alive. I spend the next 6 months listening to every other guy who comes into my shop informing me that she’s a Mary Sue and how stupid it was to crowbar her in just for the sake of appeasing the females and pandering to feminazis.
I’m 34 and I get to be a Ghostbuster! My heart sings as I dual-wield proton guns, but when the battle’s over, I have to listen to all these guys trash it and talk about how women just aren’t funny and should stop trying.
I’m 34, and I am NOT MCU Black Widow, who categorizes herself as a monster because she can’t have children, who laughs as her male coworkers make rape jokes at the office party. I am NOT MCU Scarlet Witch, who is a problem for the men to deal with, who has to stay home and cook dinner while they take care of business, because she’s just too emotional.
Today, I’m 35, and I’m Diana of Themyscira, striding across a battlefield as everyone follows her lead. I’ve been waiting for this battle my whole life. Going into the movie, I had yet to see a single bad review, from anyone, regardless of gender. I had heard no one saying the movie was pointless or stupid or just another instance of women ruining everything. There is this tall, powerful, beautiful female hero, and no one is acting like it’s their job to tear her down. I look at the trending topics today, and everyone still loves it. The naysayers are a fringe minority. There is valid criticism, as the movie isn’t perfect. It has some problems, but overall, it’s GOOD. Finally. This is what it feels like. So yeah, I cried. I cried a lot. I’ll probably mist up a lot more times when I watch it. Everyone should get to feel like that.
Read the fuck out of this of the day.
Male fantasies, male fantasies, is everything run by male fantasies? Up on a pedestal or down on your knees, it’s all a male fantasy: that you’re strong enough to take what they dish out, or else too weak to do anything about it. Even pretending you aren’t catering to male fantasies is a male fantasy: pretending you’re unseen, pretending you have a life of your own, that you can wash your feet and comb your hair unconscious of the ever-present watcher peering through the keyhole, peering through the keyhole in your own head, if nowhere else. You are a woman with a man inside watching a woman. You are your own voyeur.
Margaret Atwood, The Robber Bride (via sealedtome)
Here’s the reason why your “POOR MEN!” comments on my “men don’t know how to do emotional labor and rely solely on their wives to do it for them,” post are GARBAGE. Like, shut upppppp.
Do we live in a society that socializes a lot of young men to not have the foundational tools they need for their personal and emotional wellbeing? YES. Does that suck? YES. Is everyone in society responsible for recreating, over and over again, toxic masculinity? YES.
But what all those comments completely ignore are the BENEFITS of men not being expected to do emotional labor. Men benefit GREATLY from this shit. ALL THE TIME.
They benefit from not having to do the incredibly exhausting legwork of emotionally caring for their children. Dad is the “fun one” and mom is who you go to talk through all your life shit with. Doing emotional labor for your children is beautiful work but it is honestly a 24/7 job and it is exhausting and intensive and requires a great deal of patience. I know a shit-ton of people my age (myself included) who had little to no emotional labor support growing up from their dads. That means their moms (and grandmas. And sisters. And aunts.) were doing the bulk of this labor.
(Also it’s pretty sad when a girl child in the family is expected to do the emotional labor of her siblings cause dad can’t get his head out of his ass to show up and listen for 5 minutes)
Men benefit from not having any expectations on them that they do any other kind of kinship work too. Like calling their moms on their mom’s birthday. Like writing christmas cards, inviting friends to dinner, scheduling healthcare visits for their kids (and sometimes even for themselves!), making sure dinner is on the table for a family dinner, getting presents for family birthdays, etc etc. Many men are completely oblivious of how their family actually functions, because they’ve never had to do kinship work like this in any real, substantive way.
When men are exempt from kinship work and emotional labor, they have a shitton of free time and energy on their hands to explore other activities, activities that their busy, emotionally taxed wives cannot explore. This is a huge benefit for men and it has a huge cost for women.
I honestly think that this is the cause of many straight relationship breakups/divorces, because men have all this time to pursue personal projects and women are fucking E X H A U S T E D and busy doing all the emotional labor, and men end up looking at their wives and being like “You’re boring now. All you think about/talk about is being a mom. I need a ~partner~. Someone with more interests.”
So before you’re like POOR MEN fucking recognize that POOR MEN benefit from not being expected to do emotional labor and that these POOR MEN are GROWNASS MEN who are capable of changing that up and learning but DON’T. They’re not children anymore. They can actually do this shit if they want to.
The only acceptable reason for this is if this character is actually a demon who seduces men and then eats them. [source]
who wrote this, expose him
my breasts are nicely separated. Completely divided, every year they move apart by half an inch.
My breasts are nicely separated though they still fight for custody of the children.
I,,a woman,,,am WiDeR LOweR dOwN
That was difficult to read.
So ugly
My name is Ebony D’arkness Dementia Raven Way, and my breasts are nicely separated
OH MY GOD WHAT IS THAT AND HOW ON EARTH DID IT GET PUBLISHED
You can always tell when it’s a man writing a description because they focus oddly on the breasts. There will always be something about breasts and I can’t tell you how many times I’ve read historical or fantasy fiction and they talk about “her breasts hanging freely under her tunic” or what the fuck ever and it’s like…women don’t do that? We don’t describe ourselves by saying “I have blonde hair and blue eyes and my breasts hang freely under my tunic”. I kind of feel like we should counter by awkwardly mentioning all male character’s balls in their description. It’s kind of in the same vein.
“I have auburn hair and hazel eyes and my copious nicely separated balls hangs freely under my breeches”
G E T W I D E R L O W E R D O W N
“To get back to my body”
seriously tho what is the source of the original text….we have to drag him
Zine I made in December and forgot to upload here! Some thoughts about myself in elementary school.
I believe that there are people who truly dislike romantic gestures, in the same way that there are people who truly dislike sweets. And it’s certainly true that a lot of what passes for “romance” in our broad cultural definition—the Jumbotron proposal, the bed covered in rose petals—has been neatly split from genuine emotion, like a painted eggshell blown clear of its guts. It’s a charade of romance, a mask we give straight men to wear when they’re frightened or confused by showing their naked face. I truly did not want that, and I still don’t, and I never will. Being dragooned into acting as a partner in these romantic pageants is like having one of those dreams where you’re hauled up unprepared on stage.
But attentiveness, consideration, compliments, small and large kindnesses, feeling truly loved, having someone put you first while you put them first because you’re in cahoots to make each other’s lives easier and better: most people do like that, when it’s thoughtful and sincere. It’s here, more than in the big gestures, that romance lives: in being actively caring and thoughtful, in a way that is reciprocal but not transactional.
And yet, for most of my life, I never would have asked for or expected such a thing. Many women wouldn’t, even the ones who secretly or not-so-secretly pine to be treated like a princess. It’s one thing to fantasize about a perfect proposal or an expensive gift; that’s high-maintenance, sure, but it’s also par for the course. It’s asking something from a man, but primarily it’s asking him to step into an already-choreographed mating dance. But asking to be thought of, understood, prioritized: this is a request so deep it is almost unfathomable. It’s a voracious request, the demand of the attention whore.
Women talk ourselves into needing less, because we’re not supposed to want more—or because we know we won’t get more, and we don’t want to feel unsatisfied. We reduce our needs for food, for space, for respect, for help, for love and affection, for being noticed, according to what we think we’re allowed to have. Sometimes we tell ourselves that we can live without it, even that we don’t want it. But it’s not that we don’t want more. It’s that we don’t want to be seen asking for it. And when it comes to romance, women always, always need to ask.
when guys are like “girls over [relatively low weight] shouldn’t wear [revealing article of clothing]” a lot of the time they are trying to get women above that weight to say “OH REALLY?” and post a picture of themselves looking good in that article of clothing. It’s a creepy power play designed to prey on both women’s confidence and their insecurities and trick them into posting revealing pictures of themselves for the sexual gratification of men who they otherwise wouldn’t have given the time of day. It’s a sleazy pick-up artist tactic. It’s negging. When you see an all-too-common post that’s like “bigger girls shouldn’t wear bikinis” and the response is him getting “owned” because a woman replied with pictures of herself looking beautiful, he’s not getting owned at all, he’s getting exactly the result he was hoping for. They’re basically saying “You sure showed me by sending me, a huge sexist creep, a picture of yourself in a bikini! PLEASE don’t send me nudes, I don’t know if I could take the humiliation!”
The scary thing is that I’ve had a guy admit this to me. He said something about “fat girls always have ugly tits”. I am fat and a girl. I said “no, they don’t.” He said “prove it”. When I made it clear that a) I had nothing to prove, b) why the fuck am I gonna care about some beanpole-in-a-meme-shirt’s opinion?, and c) I wasn’t EVER gonna send him shit, he went crazy. Straight up admitted that the technique always worked blah blah, I must have been a dude pretending to be a girl blah blah, and basically had a temper tantrum till I blocked him.
So 100% guys that do this are garbage and even if they’re not, remember that you don’t have to prove anything to anyone.
“YOU DON’T HAVE TO PROVE ANYTHING TO ANYONE” ^^^^^^^
is it time for frank cho and milo manara to die or what
That’s basically a naked woman I’m YELLING
What a pervert. What the FUCK does he not know how clothes work? What the hypothetical fuck is she wearing then if we can see all that?
It’s like how bath towels in comics miraculously wrap completely around breasts. Or how even when injured and dead on the ground women in comics have to be twisted into “sexy” poses. Or how women in comics walk like they’re in high heels even barefoot.
It’s the only way men know how to draw women, because to them female characters are only there to be sexy. They only think of “women” as exploitative costumes and camera angles, high heels and titillation. Sex objects to ogle, plot objects to further male heroes’ narratives and drama, not heroes to cheer for.
I’m sorry, I was labouring under the impression that this was the crowd that thought women should wear what they want..?
And that applies to fictional women who are depicted by men how? You can’t apply agency in the plot to something metatextual when it comes to fictional characters.
Come on, let’s not pretend this is a male exclusive thing.
We’re going to have this argument are we? Not to mention you’re deviating from the original point that attributing agency to fictional characters’ clothing is asinine.
What you have here are images of power, and do you really believe these characters are designed with titillating heterosexual women and bisexual and homosexual men in mind? Because I don’t think you do.
This is why the Hawkeye Initiative exists. Take common female poses in comics, put a man in the role, and see how “empowering” and “strong” it actually looks:
Also:
He got the painting for fighting against ‘censorship.’ Note that they handed him a gross design of a female being objectified, because at the end of the day, that is all they really want, to be allowed to objectify women. They don’t care about censorship in general it is about their ability to sexualise and degrade women without consequence.
You can see her butthole for chrissakes
I think the best imagery I’ve seen to explain the difference between what men think male objectification is vs what women actually want to see is the Hugh Jackman magazine covers.
Hugh Jackman on a men’s magazine. He’s shirtless and buff and angry. He’s imposing and aggressive. This is a male power fantasy, it’s what men want to be and aspire to – intense masculinity.
Hugh Jackman on a women’s magazine. He looks like a dad. He looks like he’s going to bake me a quiche and sit and watch Game of Thrones with me. He looks like he gives really good hugs.
Men think women want big hulking naked men in loin cloths which is why they always quote He-Man as male objectification – without realizing that He Man is naked and buff in a loin cloth because MEN WANT HIM TO BE. More women would be happy to see him in a pink apron cutting vegetables and singing off-key to 70s rock.
Men want objects. Women want PEOPLE.
This is the first time I have EVER seen this false equivalence articulated so well. Thank you.
and i’ll thank you not to use the gay male gaze to justify objectification of women either. sure, i like muscles and i enjoy the occasional spandex crotch but if you think batman brooding against the skyline is a sex fantasy for me equivalent to the dipped-in-paint porn in the op, you are failing to make a crucial connection.
sex poses are INVITING. power fantasy poses are INTIMIDATING.
the only male superhero who does inviting poses in his own canon is deadpool.
and funny thing, he makes sexist, homophobic comic fans REAL NERVOUS. is this not your power fantasy, boys? are you sure?
when i was 5 years old my best friend was a boy named kyle who didn’t know how to knock on doors so he made dinosaur noises outside my window to wake me up in the summer until i demonstrated how to ball his fists and slam them against my doors. we collected caterpillars in my trailer park and built them houses while we traded pokemon cards. he wasn’t the only one. there was ben, and mitch, and noah—but kyle’s the only one who hurt me, because when he tried to kiss me and i asked him why, he told me “because you’re a girl and i’m a boy, shouldn’t we like each other?”
i missed him so much and i wondered why he couldn’t just be my friend like he always was
in the first grade there was rich and joseph and i got sent to detention with them almost every day with a smile on my face. we built block towers and sang to my teacher’s lion king soundtracks when she’d
turn the lights off during lunch time. one day they got in a fist fight
over me at recess, and i wondered why they felt they needed to share my
friendship, like it was something they owned.
in the second grade zach and i played yu gi oh under our desks during
free time and i got moved for talking to him constantly. everyone in
the class would tease him and i for talking, asking when we were going
to date already, asking him if he’d kissed me, and he stopped being my
friend.
when i was 11 i met a chubby boy with the name of a colour who wore
puffy vests and unwashed t-shirts, with greasy hair and bright blue eyes
and a smile that hid hurt behind it. people didn’t like him because he
was silly, but i liked him, because i was also silly. he became my
friend the day he bought me 5 giant roses and asked me to be his
girlfriend, and i politely declined but promised him i’d be his best
friend because i’d always wanted a best guy friend that stuck around.
we burnt our feet on the concrete during the summer and walked home
with the sunset silhouetting us. he talked often about how he loved me,
but never blamed me for being me, even though he refused to move on.
that boy dyed his hair jet black and sat on the end of my bed playing
songs to me on guitar, and all that pent up rage from before didn’t show
until the first time he slapped me across the face and called me a dumb
cunt.
in the 7th grade there was a boy named ryan who sat next to me on the
bus and talked to me about manga. he’d ask me personal invasive
questions but i didn’t mind because it was attention and i liked
attention. i was dating another guitarist with curly brown hair, one
who was much more kind-tempered than the other, and ryan mentioned how
much of an asshole he was every day. i wondered, why, why does he think
the love of my life is an asshole? but whenever i asked him, he just
told me, “girls only date assholes. there’s no room for nice guys like
me.”
i wondered, if he was so nice, why did he say such mean things?
he never stopped with me, taking me to movies, hanging out with me,
you know. being friendly. i thought we were friends. but then, how
many times had i thought that before?
how many times had i bonded with a boy, thought they got me, only for them to ask me if i wanted to make out?
how come when i told ryan i was coming out as a lesbian, he stopped
being my friend, and said “damnit, the one girl i really want to pound
into a mattress, and she’s only interested in chicks!”
there was a boy my junior year who stayed up all night with me until
the sun rose, talking about life, past loves, hopes, dreams. beneath a
million twinkling stars spanning forever, he brushed long brown hair out
of his eyes and listened to me talk about the history that made me.
then he asked me if i’d ever consider dating a guy, and complained
about how he’d never get laid.
when i told him no a couple hundred times, he found new girls to listen to.
i would sit on the couch and play zelda with dakota, and he’d talk
about all my favourite games with me. he was the closest thing to
support i had, and the letters and poems he wrote me were always so kind
and friendly. but he’d put his arms around me on the couch, and no
matter how many times i told him i was uncomfortable, he’d still come
over every day and do it.
“don’t you know how it feels to love someone and not have them love
you back? don’t you know what it feels like to be friendzoned?”
when i meet guys who talk about the friendzone, who talk about the
girls who don’t give “nice guys” like them i chance, i always want to
just say
when i was 10 years old i met a girl whose brown hair fell across her
shoulders and whos eyes sparkled when the sunlight hit them, whose
voice was like velvet and whose scent was like mountain smoke, who made
me dizzier than a fly climbing a sugar hill. and i’m 18 years old, and i
still love her, and she knows, and she doesn’t love me.
but my first thoughts upon hearing her rejection were not “what a
bitch,” were not “she just wants a douchebag and not a nice girl like
me!” were not “im going to keep pushing her until she dates me,”
they were
“she is the best friend i have ever had, and i am the best she’s ever had, and i would hate to take that away from her.”
so before you play the victim, mr. Nice Guy, before you angrily throw
your fedora on the ground and blame the girl you claim to adore so
much:
put yourself in the shoes of a girl who thought she made a wonderful
friend, only to find out that he just wanted her for sex. that he just
wanted her for a relationship. a girl who was just an object to win, a
prize. a girl who’s trust you’ve just shattered.
maybe she friendzoned you. but you girlfriendzoned her, first.
how terrifying, to be aging and girl. at 18 i was told by men that i was “the perfect age,” and i still thought it was a compliment. is it because at 20 i figured out how sharp those words were. i felt old at 21, felt like if grey hairs came and my spine cracked i was done for. how scary. i am reminded constantly by “realistic” ideas in fantasy novels that i should have five kids.
my life feels short. like it is squeezed into my twenties. like at 30 i become ghost, just another mother or hard worker or both, just another background character. like if i am not settled and making a difference by 27 i should just give up already. is this something men feel? like a clock is painted on their back, one hand warning: your beauty is something you are valued for and it is something you cannot get back.
and why was i only beautiful, i wonder, at 18 on a riverbank. i’m told often my childish face is a blessing. that i shouldn’t want to look older. one told me i was a trap falling: “you look young but you’re not” he said to me, “it kind of led me on”. am i not young?
maybe i am wrong. maybe it’s just how we all feel, getting old, like time is slipping from us. maybe men do worry that they will be alone forever if they don’t settle by thirty, maybe it’s even because they think they’ll turn ugly. maybe we all squish our lives into that incredibly young decade. what do i know. i’m still learning.
I’m almost 25 and I’ve been feeling this a lot lately.
As a 48 year old lesbian, I offer my perspective on aging, and you all can take it or leave it.
Our understanding of our own aging is very much conditioned by the priorities of straight men, who in the aggregate understand beauty and femininity, indeed women in general, in literally superficial terms. Most of the ads you see for anti-aging products, for instance, focus on its *visible* symptoms: graying hair, wrinkling skin or discolored skin, sagging breasts, changes in body shape, etc. These are the symptoms of female aging that men perceive, and they are the ones that the cosmetics and the larger anti-aging industry therefore target. (Men do have their own anxieties about visibly aging, mostly related to hair loss and body shape; but they are not, for instance, generally terrified by the appearance of wrinkles, unless they work in the entertainment industry.)
But aging is not just something that happens to everyone else’s perception of you; it is something that happens in your own body, at levels deeper than anyone else (especially anyone male) is ever likely to perceive. From my POV the really important thing about aging is how you feel. Your body is where you live; it is for you. Aging is inevitable, but it can to some extent be intentional, in that you can (to some extent; all this is limited by the amount of time and money available to you and the healthfulness of the environments you have lived in and how you did in the DNA lottery) choose to do things that will help preserve the things about your body that make YOU happy to be living there–things like flexibility, strength, and the smooth functioning of your major organs. Generally, if you’re healthy, you don’t think about any of this stuff at 18 or 25; but when you are 40, you will start to take more of an interest as you come to understand how important all of this is to your own ability to enjoy life.
So that sucks, as does menopause, which is the unacknowledged referent of a lot of cultural anxieties about female aging. But the point I want to make is: one of the worst things that the phenomenon described so evocatively by the OP does to girls and young women is to make them so anxious about their own bodies that they are unable to enjoy and appreciate their youth while they have it. And that is theft. It really is. I miss youth, but even more do I regret the fact that when I was young I was so fucked up by cultural obsessions about female beauty that I was unable to fully enjoy the body that I had then. I did not appreciate its many excellent qualities, and it was a long time before I allowed myself to accept and act on its desires. At a time when I was beautiful, I thought I was fat and ugly, and that because no man would ever find me attractive, I was doomed to loneliness and isolation. After I met Mrs. Plaidder, her conviction of my beauty eventually passed into me. As a result, I enjoyed my life in general a lot more in my 30s than I did in my teens. I’ve enjoyed my 40s more too, apart from the cancer and the current catastrophe. Age does actually bring experience and knowledge and, to those able to profit from it, wisdom. You do gain, even as you lose.
Catullus, yelling in Latin verse at his lover Lesbia, asks her venomously, “cui videberis bella?” By whom will you be seen to be beautiful? It’s a question that still poisons our sense of self and our understanding of our own possibilities. By myself, asshole, she should have replied; and so may we all, at any age.
Long post, but – my three cents. At 67 I don’t feel old and/or ugly. In fact, I really enjoy myself. I’m happy with how I look – because I got over the brainwashed way we see ourselves. As plaidadder said: “even more do I regret the fact that when I was young I was so fucked up by cultural obsessions about female beauty that I was unable to fully enjoy the body that I had then.” BTW, plaidadder – you are STILL beautiful, trust me. The American cult of youth and they way of evaluating women’s beauty as inevitably liked to age is fucking TOXIC. I now live in South America; was complemented ( in a non-creepy way) by two guys less than half my age last week, grey hair & all. Love it here.
You will never feel as old as you do in your late 20s to late 30s. Seriously. Western culture makes the passing of youth into a tragic death and that’s – so fucking sad. Once it has passed and you can no longer reasonably think of yourself as young, no matter how desperately you try to hang on to it – you find yourself in a whole other country, you realize that you’ve lived on one side of a mountain all your life and told there’s nothing beyond it only to discover that there is, in fact, an entire world on the other side. Don’t believe the lie.
I’m just going to reblog all these responses because they’re so solid and right on.
just moving along like everyone else 