something I find kinda interesting about radfems is that because they believe that womanhood is characterized by universal experiences of trauma and oppression, and because they believe that only they and people who agree with them correctly understand the nature of this oppression, they end up sounding like they believe that the only reason women would like things that they think are bad is if they're somehow being tricked into liking it
does a woman like wearing makeup or revealing clothes? patriarchal brainwashing. a cis woman who identifies as a lesbian dating a trans woman with a penis? she's doing it out of guilt or pity, or she was pressured into it. afab people coming out as non-binary or trans men? that's just internalized misogyny making them want to escape womanhood. hijabi women keeping their heads covered and dressing modestly? obviously they've been pressured into it by their oppressive islamic upbringing. women who are into kink, particularly if they're submissive? abuse victims who don't realize their male partners are taking advantage of them
women aren't allowed to like things under radical feminism. every aspect of a woman's life is either a political statement or a decision made under duress. women have free will and agency unless they disagree with me, in which case they're helpless victims who can't recognize how oppressed they truly are.
don't get me wrong, I think it's worth examining why you enjoy doing the things you're doing. the modern state of corporatized pop-feminism has found a way to frame nearly every act, regardless of how harmful to one's self or others, as feminist, and that's a trap that you certainly don't want to fall into. but the vision of womanhood that radfems paint is so bleak and joyless that it can never adequately act as an answer to that problem
Et voici un fanart, cette fois de la série de romans de Pierre Pevel Les Lames du Cardinal (aux éditions Bragelonne ou SF Folio). Je viens de terminer le tome 1. J’ai mis un peu de temps à rentrer dans l’histoire, car il y a beaucoup de personnages à introduire, mais une fois qu’on plonge dans l’intrigue, impossible de le lâcher ! J’ai hâte de lire la suite ! Alors de quoi ça parle ?! Eh bien, les lames du cardinal sont un groupe d’espions du cardinal de Richelieu qui vont reprendre du service. Au premier abord, on se dit que c’est un roman de capes et d’épées mais pas que !! Car Pierre Pevel mêle aussi à ces intrigues une dimension fantastique, car les humains vivent étroitement avec des dragons !! J’ai beaucoup aimé ce mélange de capes et d’épées et de fantasy (un peu comme dans la Rose écarlate, quelque part…). Pour ce fanart, j’ai décidé de dessiner un des personnages qui m’intrigue beaucoup : Saint Lucq ! Je suis dans ma période “beau ténébreux mystérieux,”, haha !! Avec un petit dragon noir ! Voilà, je lirai la suite des aventures des lames avec beaucoup d’impatience en tout cas !!
Terry Pratchett started his career as a crypto-monarchist and ended up the most consistently humane writer of his generation. He never entirely lost his affection for benevolent dictatorship, and made a few classic colonial missteps along the way, but in the end you’d be hard pressed to find a more staunchly feminist, anti-racist, anti-classist, unsentimental and clear-sighted writer of Old White British Fantasy.
The thing I love about Terry’s writing is that he loved - loved - civil society. He loved the correct functioning of the social contract. He loved technology, loved innovation, but also loved nature and the ways of living that work with and through it. He loved Britain, but hated empire (see “Jingo”) - he was a ruralist who hated provincialism, a capitalist who hated wealth, an urbanist who reveled in stories of pollution, crime and decay. He was above all a man who loved systems, of nature, of thought, of tradition and of culture. He believed in the best of humanity and knew that we could be even better if we just thought a little more.
As a writer: how skillful, how prolific, how consistent. The yearly event of a new Discworld book has been a part of my life for more than two decades, and in that barrage of material there have been so few disappointments, so many surprises… to come out with a book as fresh and inspired as “Monstrous Regiment” as the 31st novel in your big fantasy series? Ludicrous. He was just full of treasure. What a thing to have had, what a thing to have lost.
In the end, he set a higher standard, as a writer and as a person. He got better as he learned, and he kept learning, and there was no “too late” or “too hard” or “I can’t be bothered to do the research.” He just did the work. I think in his memory the best thing we can do is to roll up our sleeves and do the same.
Preoccupied by the way polyamory is treated with hate. I've gotten hate for even approaching the subject in the past. There's so much violent rhetoric and ideation surrounding it, so much genuine bigotry and prejudice towards people who practice it. But if you mention that, you get met with dismissal. It's not a big deal. You're taking it too seriously. Who gives a shit. Get over yourself. It is something that people respect so little that they refuse to even see it as a legitimate identity. Even left-wing progressive types will make jokes tantamount to thrashing blue-haired SJW snowflakes when it comes to polyamory. They're gross. They're weird. They're always cringe. It's never the people you want to be poly. I would rather kill myself. You'd think simply changing the structure of a relationship wouldn't be a problem, but even the most ardent defenders of equality can begin to say some pretty awful shit. Problem is, fundamentally, it is not seen as legitimate. It's not seen as deserving respect. There's all this handwringing about how these relationships are doomed to fail in order to justify this kind of thought and speech. It's bizarre to watch unfold. Frankly, it's the same sentiment and a lot of the same jokes as those cracked about nonbinary people. We're at a point where we've firmly accepted that everyone has a right to do what they want within the structure of social norms, you can take any side you want and do it with whoever you want. But as soon as you step outside of those norms, as soon as you go beyond the boundaries of social convention to find what suits you personally, everybody becomes a bitter reactionary.
Let the guy sleep, he deserves it...
this year let's just wake up King Arthur that bitch been sleeping long enough
So here's a little thing I wrote for the Cardinal's Blades. I have never found anything written for it but I'm absolutely in love with these stories and this universe :) It turned out way softer than intended, but that's good too! 247 words
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Saint Lucq enters the room where she is reading. She lifts her head slowly as her eyes trail on the page for as long as they can and he can’t help the corner of his mouth lifting at that. When she meets his eyes, she answers his smile in a radiant way. Her enthusiasm in everything she does is very endearing, but Saint Lucq is especially moved when she’s smiling at him like that. Saint Lucq takes the few steps separating them and grabs the hand that has just put the book away. He lifts it gently to his mouth without breaking the gaze they’re sharing. And as his cold lips touch her skin, he can hear her low and steady exhale. As he peppers her hand with kisses, she reaches with her other hand to take away his hat, and then undo the clasp of his cloak. He stops as she reaches for his glasses, her hand floating mid-air as she awaits for his consent. He nods shortly and she gently takes his all-time protection away from his eyes. Suddenly all is a bit green and the loss of this barrier gives him shivers. Maybe she felt them, or maybe she just knows how delicate this is for him. Either way, she squeezes reassuringly his hands and St Lucq feels a wave of warm gratitude for her. One of his hands lifts to brush her jawline and her smile brings another wave of warmth to him.
People underestimate how much it fucks you up to be subtly excluded as a kid. I would try to talk to my classmates and be met with disinterest or annoyance. The one friend I had, who I clung to and nodded along to his every word, had other friends he liked just as much or more. And his other friends didn’t care for me at all.
I look back at pictures from the time and see how separated I was from them. I remember knowing I was different. I remember posing questions about the world to the girls playing next to me and realizing that they had never asked the same ones to themselves. That the ways we thought couldn’t be more different.
I kept myself amused with my own fanatical stories and musings in my head. I would wander the playground on a circular path, imagining a friend and being sorely disappointed when it didn’t feel as real as I’d hoped.
There was a bubble separating me from everyone else, thin, and nearly invisible, but with a pearly sheen you could catch under the right conditions. I knew it was there, they knew it was there, and it changed me
"nothing matters" WRONG!! everything matters to me because I only have this life and despite it all it's my most prized possession
I know someone who calls herself a feminist, puts her pronouns in her work email signature, donates money to women’s empowerment funds, and thinks we should deport more refugees. I also know someone who calls people ‘pussies’ when he plays video games, who doesn’t know what a pronoun is, and, for his defence of low-wage women workers in a highly-exploited industry, is a better, more strident defender of the rights of working-class women than almost anyone else I know. Of these two people, I know who is on my team, and who I want on my team, yet the standard liberal feminist calculation would have me chose the woman who loves a little deportation over the man who is occasionally uncouth, solely because the woman knows to keep her language civil, and the man doesn’t. Liberal feminists get incredibly caught up in the politics of language, because language is all they have. They don’t have a revolutionary programme for overthrowing patriarchy, so they’re forced to tinker around the edges of it, quibbling over word choice and jargon instead of building the coalitions necessary for destroying patriarchy.
— We Should Not All Be Feminists by Frances Wright
weird anti ideology finally leaking out into the mainstream
It's honestly such a shame that we've made such a huge thing out of swimming and swimsuits and looking good in swimsuits and fat people not looking good in swimsuits. Swimming is actually the perfect exercise for fat people because it puts zero pressure on the joints, which is a much bigger concern for us than it is for skinny people, and lets you exercise basically every muscle group without straining too much and risking injury. Yet somehow this is one of the least accessible exercises to fat people due to nothing more than a culture of body shaming. The work to unlearn all the shame to be comfortable in a bathing suit in front of strangers is huge even for conventionally attractive people, but I could probably count on one hand the number of fat people I've met who were confident enough to get in a bathing suit and go swimming in public.
And what is the exercise that somehow everyone thinks they should do instead? Jogging. It's more accessible, sure, it's easy and costs nothing to go outside and run. But I need you to understand telling a fat person to go running is basically telling them to go destroy their knees. Not to mention it's probably one of the most physically uncomfortable exercises to do when you have a body that jiggles even with compression garments.
Imagine a world where everyone had the ability and equal access to whatever exercise fit them best and helped them be happy and healthiest. Imagine a world where fat people go swimming.
French. Posts sometimes. Can't pass up an opportunity to apocalypse. (Yes, I know it's not a proper verb.)
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