I hate this idea people have made of people like, fetishizing themselves by creating representation where-ever the fuck they want it.
Like, if a straight dude looked at every female character and said “lesbian” you could possibly consider that his motive is fetishization, but a lesbian calling her favorite characters lesbians is not fetishization. it’s hard to call “Velma from Scooby Doo is a lesbian reblog if you agree” fetishization of lesbians, especially if it’s a post made by a lesbian and reblogged mostly by lesbians
There is actually porn of Velma from Scooby Doo and other female characters, drawn for straight men to get off to. Is that fetishization? Yea!
But honestly I’m so tired of “Autistic people calling characters autistic is fetishizing autism” “Lesbians calling characters lesbians is fetishizing lesbians” “Trans people calling characters trans is fetishizing being trans” because it’s literally just people finding or creating representation and there’s such a difference from things that actually fetishize each of these things. Calling the search for representation fetishization is so blatantly a call to avoid consensual visibility and it’s obnoxious
The sexual nausea associated with all these monster-women helps explain why so many real women have for so long expressed loathing of (or at least anxiety about) their own, inexorably female bodies. The “killing” of oneself into an art object – the pruning and preening, the mirror madness, and concern with odors and aging, with hair which is invariably too curly or too lank, with bodies too thin or too thick – all this testifies to the efforts women have expended not just trying to be angels but trying not to become female monsters.
Sandra Gilbert and Susan Gubar, “The Madwoman in the Attic"
if your brand of feminism is that oppressive institutions can stay in place as long as a woman is in charge regardless of the less privileged women she exploits… maybe like try harder
not having been able to fully participate in society — usually to an extreme degree in the not-so-distant past — seems like a pretty important part of oppression to me. in fact, i can’t think of a single axis of oppression that does not involve this, and i’m inclined to think it’s a necessary component.
to be lgbt is to be or act with regards to gender in ways that society views as deeply deviant and subversive, and has historically categorized together as a special kind of deviance. according to cis heteropatriarchy, trans people are the wrong gender, and act in wrong gendered ways, relative to their birth assignment, and gay and bi people are attracted to the wrong genders for them and have wrong gendered relations with other people. the common theme of gender here is not an accident; it is not coincidental; it is the basis of lgbt people’s oppression. it is the system whose rules we are punished for breaking.
Right now many liberals are intellectually laboring under the misunderstanding that there is a “peace” in our society that needs to be protected; that we live in a “peaceful society”, and it needs to stay that way
Let my black, trans ass tell you that that is Not The Case, when I say “no justice, no peace”, I am not saying “If I and mine cannot have justice, I will disrupt your peace”, what I am relating is a tautology: for as long as there is injustice in this country, there is no possibility for the status quo to be called “peace”. to shatter the false peace is nothing more than to make evident the inherently violent nature of our society; one in which a genocide against black and indigenous individuals and culture continues in slow-motion, in which the paid guns of the corporate elite are free to kill with impunity, in which the very economy of the country self-sustains on cannibalizing the poor, vulnerable, and addicted. There is no peace left to protect; there never was.
“The woman who checks her makeup half a dozen times a day to see if her foundation has caked or her mascara has run, who worries that the wind or the rain may spoil her hairdo, who looks frequently to see if her stockings have bagged at the ankle or who, feeling fat, monitors everything she eats, has become, just as surely as the inmate of the Panopticon, a self-policing subject, a self committed to a relentless self-surveillance. This self-surveillance is a form of obedience to patriarchy. It is also the reflection in woman’s consciousness of the fact that she is under surveillance in ways that he is not, that whatever else she may become, she is importantly a body designed to please or to excite.”—Sandra Lee Bartky, “Foucault, Femininity, and the Modernization of Patriarchal Power (via bruisedplumkiss)
Bi women who date men are still bi and ofc bi women who date men need support but be honest. Outside of small pockets of wlw tumblr where are bi girls encouraged to date women and are even uplifted for their love of women? Im all ears 👂🌽
Everyone’s acting so shocked that Rebecca sugar is bi and I’m like listen,,, no straight person has ever written gay characters this well or this respectfully in the history of ever. Either she was like The One True Ally ™ or she was LGBT
I think basically everyone agrees that the Ghostbusters trailers fucking blew but there’s “doing a shit job of selling your film” and then there’s “making it look like you’ve cast the black actress as someone ‘street smart’ when really she’s just a huge fucking history nerd"
That’s the point where it tips over into being damaging for more than just your box office.
You mean the black actress is NOT cast as ‘street smart’ but is actually at the same level of intellectual nerdery as the white characters? Maybe I should watch this movie after all.
When she says “You may know science, but I know this city,” she’s not saying it like “I grew up on the streets” or whatever. It’s immediately after this line, “I read a lot of nonfiction.” Her entire thing is that the scientists all know science, but she knows THE HISTORY of the city. At one point she’s griping about joining the Ghostbusters… because she expected it to be more like a book club.
Honestly the only thing that I didn’t like about Ghostbusters was that Patty doesn’t have an advanced degree in some stupidly obscure and tiny field in history. I love that she’s super smart and knows so much, but I wish that it was more than “I read a lot of books.”
Honestly all getting a degree in the humanities is - is reading a lot of books, and journals, and then writing about them. All of which Patty is clearly capable of doing she just didn’t. Higher Ed isn’t for everyone. And that’s okay. Especially since I am sick to death of characters having 16 PhDs to prove how smart they are. I thought it was cool that we have a smart character who doesn’t have a degree, and she’s still treated as an expert.
Don’t worry about a lack of representation for dudes in the new Ghostbusters movie guys! You have Chris Hemsworth’s character! He’s a man!
He’s a Strong Male Character, he doesn’t need a woman to make him feel complete! I mean, yeah, he seems to be wearing a lot of unnecessarily tight clothes, but that’s just because he Feels Comfortable In His Own Skin! He’s pretty bright for a dumb blonde to? That makes him super relatable! He’s not a Dude in Distress! He doesn’t need a woman to save him! He is Fiesty! He can Hold His Own against the Ladies! He’s not loud and over bearing, he’s a cool, empowering male character! There may even be some ROMANCE! You guys like romance right? He’s practically one of the girls! He’s just as strong as the women! He’s TECH SUPPORT! THAT’S ALMOST AS GOOD AS BEING A REAL GHOSTBUSTER RIGHT???
But Chris Hemsworth still doesn’t look like a convincing nerd.
You mean glasses and standing near a computer isn’t enough to make him a nerd? He must be a fake nerd guy!
He’s both nerdy tech-support and a model, duh… it just makes him unique. Not like all those avarage-looking nerd stereotypes that men are forced to watch in every other movie. Such a Strong Male Character.
look, honey, men can be smart AND hot. it’s the 21st century!
ive never properly watched SU but it seems like such a pure healing show like if there was a way to just skip thru to where the gay is explicit…. or if i had a noninternet copy to watch i’d binge it
I know everyone thinks that straight girls are much more progressive than straight men when it comes to not being homophobic, and I’m really sick of people thinking that straight girls are not just as homophobic as straight men. Being a woman doesn’t make it ok for you to hate gay girls, you’re still a fucking homophobe and you are literally no better than straight men.
u don’t have to construct the most politically acceptable/radical gender n sexuality identity combo u possibly can to be a good person. that’s an awful, emotionally taxing and also just disingenuous way 2 live ur life. just figure out what ur real feelings are and put ur beliefs into practice / do your best to be mindful and care for other people. It’s Okay.
