1) This Is Disturbing And I Feel So Sorry For This Poor Couple

you say you're a writer! so am i. what are you writing?

I’ve actually got several projects going!

My current one, (and the one I plan to release to the world first however I end up doing it lol) is called, “Therese” and it’s a butchfemme lesbian second chance romance, and musings on how it was growing up in deeply conservative areas of America as a lesbian who didn’t realize she was a lesbian. It’s contemporary but also purposefully left without markers of exactly what time period it’s set in (because that blurs when you get to farm towns and they can end up recycling a lot of beliefs that people thought we left back in the 60s)

Basically it follows the path of Therese through the eyes of her childhood best friend Phoebe, as they grow up together and Therese (butch) begins rebelling against what she’s been taught in a more loud and aggressive manner, while Phoebe feels too petrified to really do anything. They end up realizing their feelings for each other but it doesn’t work out because Therese wants to leave and Phoebe still has a lot of guilt due to religion so she stays and they lose touch for several years. Eventually Therese returns and Phoebe pursues her again because she doesn’t want to lose the love of her life the second time around.

I also wanted to push back at the Butch=cold, mean, uncaring sort of stereotype I often see both in media and in characterization of lesbians within fandom, so Therese, though she is loud and opinionated, is also consistently characterized by her kindness and care. Phoebe is the one who struggles with more bitterness, which made more sense to me considering the lesbians I’ve met in my life who came out later often have a lot more pent up resentment (myself included) than those who came out earlier. Though Phoebe also learns over the course of her life that the pursuit pushed on women to be quiet and calm and never angry is ultimately misogynistic in nature, so she embraces her anger too.

I’ve also got a fantasy series I’ve been working on for like 4 years but the world building for that one goes DEEP so in nowhere near done with it 😭 so “Therese” is definitely going to be the one i release first

“kink belongs at pride” i’d love to know why the fuck you weirdos wanna do that so bad? why do you yearn for random people to see what freaky dumb shit you’re into? literally why.

and i am like 90% sure i once saw a tweet that was responding to someone saying children go to pride and they were like “um children are more sexually aware than you think”.. there is something terribly wrong with you

And then people try to claim that it’s because being sapphic is “normalized in media” —you mean porn?? Being fetishized is not the same as being accepted, and it’s still incredibly dangerous. Sure maybe some men will ask you for a threesome and then get grumpy when you refuse and leave it at that (which is still sexual harassment) but many other times they get violent when you don’t fulfill their fantasies. Or they try corrective rape.

The real reason this happens is because our collective understanding of sexuality is phallocentric and a lot of people cannot fathom a healthy and fulfilling relationship between two women. Somehow a dick needs to be involved in some way.

Additionally, in terms of actual media, it is in general more accepted to be a homosexual man and gay men get more time, better story development, and way more attention from fans, as a general group.

You know how sometimes people act like homophobia toward women barely exists? I feel like that definitely plays into the way people act toward bisexual women vs men. Like men are oh so brave for coming out as bisexual and braving homophobia to be true to themselves and why would they lie about it when he could have saved face and stay closeted until he dated a man, how brave. vs with women it's like why would she even come out if she's not dating a woman, she's probably faking it for the clout (no mention of bravery for risking homophobia)

no the female character who is a masculine woman is not secretly a transgender man and yes you saying that she is is misogynistic <3

I’m abt to hit the crash out phase I can feel it approaching

“feminists should be nicer to men or else more of them will join the alt right” that’s strange because it’s never occurred to me to fuck off and join the kkk when a person of color is mean to me. I think if your threshold for being radicalized into a hate movement is as low as “I felt left out and it was mean” you weren’t going to make a very good feminist to begin with

I’ve seen several posts (and a lot of reposts of those posts) talking about the misogyny in rap music produced by men, and while I think that having a conversation about misogyny in entertainment is incredibly important, I also think it’s important to think about why we’re focused so heavily on demonizing rap music in particular.

A lot of mainstream music produced by men, regardless of it’s genre, has the same messaging of misogyny, rape culture, sexism, etc. If you read a lot of the lyrics of popular club/dance music especially, it’s hiding in plain sight. However, in a world in which white is the norm, we’re used to hearing that type of messaging disguised underneath the soothing, fun loving, catchy melodies sung by familiar voices so we sing along without thinking about the words leaving our mouths. Rap, while it’s still a very popular genre, goes against that familiar, comfortable habit of hiding lyrics and is very straightforward, and therefore our condemnation increases because it forces you to interact with the lyrics instead of shutting off your brain.

I don’t advocate for a lack of critical thinking or criticism for the genre, in fact I’m asking for the opposite. Is Rap truly the worst genre for misogyny? Because I could, and am, arguing that abusive lyrics hidden in songs that play over the speakers at every establishment (and especially around children) with no issue, is just as bad if not worse. Genres such as Country, which is just as full of misogyny, are treated with a kind of “roll your eyes and get over it” attitude. We treat it as a joke, if we acknowledge it at all. Those silly, backwards folk living in a cornfield town don’t know any better, really.

Socially, we also forgive and forget about male violence much quicker when the man is white. I’ve watched people blow up angrily about a white man’s crime and after 6 months it’s forgotten to the point nobody remembers it when I bring it up. However a black man in that same situation will have his disgrace last years longer. This is not me advocating in any way for everyone to get the white man treatment, but for everyone to have an accurate social reaction to the crime itself without the person’s race tainting how we view him (and by extension, those in his racial group).

Rap, while it has some serious bad apples now, has an incredibly important cultural history of pushing for social change that other popular genres in the world today do not, and it’s ironic to me that it is now seen as the most morally corrupt and oppressive genre. Associating the entire genre solely with low intelligence (both in the artist and the audience), general moral failing and filth, and a backwards view on society when there are so many rappers who have pushed for social changes harder than any other musicians, when you do not similarly condemn other musical genres, is unfortunately a case of internalized racism.

I will reiterate once again that I am not in any way saying that anyone or anything should get off scot-free or without deep criticism. Pointing out an unfair balance in how we condemn groups of people is simply that, pointing it out. I think we need more criticism but I think that criticism needs to be nuanced, complete, and informed. I would also urge you to look into smaller or more underground rappers/rap movements because there is a lot to enjoy and many good people to support when you’re able to get past the big names that do well for a reason. The majority of our culture today is misogynistic so misogynistic lyrics appeal to the general masses, and people who refuse to fall under that group don’t end up as famous as those who do.

[Edited to hopefully make my point easier to understand bc I was getting several reposts that seemed to be taking away a message I didn’t mean to put across]

Ugh literally. Like as a writer and aspiring author myself (it’s my hope to get a novella self published within the next year, even if that’s just uploading it to Wattpad bc idk how I feel about self publishing through Amazon like many ppl do) I’m going to go out on a limb and say that reductionism isn’t even necessarily bad. It can be a literary tool, and the problem is overusing it, like any other literary tool. The reductionism of the one girl being different was supposed to make a sense of isolation easily understood by the reader, and oftentimes it wasn’t meant to be a direct mirror to real life. It depends on your audience and what you’re trying to do but I don’t even think it’s always bad.

And just as you said, nobody cares about reductionism unless it’s to point out a problem, reductionism that benefits the status quo is completely fine.

I know there are a lot of complaints about the “Not Like other girls” era of books aimed at women, some I disagree with, some I don’t. But I’m rereading one of those types of books right now (technically re-listening bc I’m using an audiobook but same idea) which I absolutely adored the first time I read, and honestly I kind of miss that time period.

Like sure it was reductionist at times, but at least the women were unabashedly themselves and pushed back against gender stereotypes. This book is set in a fantasy past based off of Medieval Germany (from what I can tell) and with that obviously comes the sexism of the period, and she had actually realistic feelings on the matter. She thinks about how she wishes she’s a boy because she wants to have a career, specifically a farrier or a hunter, and criticizes the fact that she’s living in a society in which her value is through marriage. She’s practical minded, she looks up to her father and male relatives because she wants the freedom they have, but also feels a sense of displacement and disgust from them because of their sexism, and in general just has so much more energy as a character than I often see in more mainstream books now. And she’s STILL a woman and eventually finds her power as a woman.

Idk this is just a personal pet peeve of mine but I don’t like our current idea of rejecting surface level femininity = rejecting womanhood, either positively or negatively. On the one side you get shamed for it because you’re a pick me, on the other side you get told you’re just a man. And it’s made characters really really bland.

(Also maybe I just am the problem, idk, but I have had the experience of feeling left out and not like my female peers growing up because they were content to uphold patriarchal ideals and I wasn’t. I still put up a good effort when it came to talking about crushes and doing all the fun sorts of “girly” things they liked, but I had trouble finding anyone who reciprocated that energy towards me when I wanted to talk about my interests that didn’t necessarily fall into that category. So imo there is a kernel of truth in the “not like other girls” stereotype, not because other girls are INHERENTLY bad, but because of how our current societal pressures work on young girls.)

I love vampirism as a metaphor for being homosexual and how our sexuality is seen as inherently predatory when it shouldn’t be, I love vampirism as a metaphor for obsessive and destructive love, I love vampirism as a metaphor for mental illness, BUT I also present vampirism as a metaphor for physical chronic illness.

The constant ache and hunger that will never, ever go away. You learn to live with it but sometimes it becomes overwhelming and causes you to lash out because you just can’t stand it anymore. The cycles of telling yourself you’re fine, of being able to make your peace with it, followed by the violent despair of knowing you will never know a life again without this pain and suffering. Slowly forgetting what it was like to feel normal. The ways you cope with and abate the pain are constantly demonized by those around you so you go as long as possible before giving in to what you need to survive, only for the waiting to worsen the effects so you need even more once you give in. Being seen as weak or worthy of ostracism and ridicule for something that was completely out of your control.

As someone who’s had chronic pain (and other symptoms) my whole life, the character archetype of someone being changed into a monster against their will (vampirism, werewolves, etc) has always spoken to me for that reason. Like I get it, sexy alpha werewolf claims you blablabla, but I think modern literature has leaned too much into the sexy aspect of monsters and could use a lot more of the psychological horror aspect. Really having to sit with what this character has become against their will and think about the ethics of their actions, and if they can even be condemned for what they do in response when it’s out of their control. Blame that had nowhere to go. Idk I was musing that over last night as I went over some of my old WIP and it just interests me much more than the sexy monster trope

what’s so ironic to me is how much prostitution enthusiasts stress "listening to sex workers"—but the moment those very "sex workers" they claim to love so much disagree with them, suddenly they’re not worth listening to anymore.

"listen to sex workers" I'm listening! are you?