chivalry never existed

And my dad and brothers? Were deeply disturbed by the movie Jennifer’s Body. I was flabbergasted. It’s not scary! It’s not even that gory. But they were horrified by it. These men who grew up on 70s slashers were legitimately shook by 90 minutes of Megan Fox eating a few teenage boys, mostly off-screen.

Similarly, my all-male reading panel for my thesis? Were so disturbed by my synopsis of the film Teeth that they couldn’t even talk about it. One of them said he couldn’t look at his wife for a week after reading it.

Again, grown-ass men who study and teach media for a living. Who definitely watch and enjoy horror movies. One of whom was a huge Tarantino buff. We watched and read worse in his intro to mass media class! But one movie about a girl whose vag could bite was enough to haunt him.

Then of course you have things like the Gone Girl backlash–men yelling that Amy Dunne is evil and women clamoring to assure everyone that they know she is not someone to emulate–the backlash against Carol Danvers, and, more recently, the griping from MRAs against the upcoming film Hustlers, which is about strippers scamming their Wall Street clients.

My conclusion? Most men–at least most straight, cisgender men, who are both my sample population and most of the ones whining that Carol is a “villain”–are perfectly fine with, and desensitized to, media where men do violence to women (horror movies), or men do violence to men (horror and action movies). They’re even sort of fine when women do violence to women (“ooooo cat fight!”).

But they get intensely uncomfortable when women are depicted doing any kind of violence to men, especially in films that tilt the balance of power to the other side of the m/f gender binary beyond a single moment or scene.

So woman as flesh-eating monster with men as her preferred cuisine? Woman who responds to unwanted sexual contact by biting it off? Woman who frames her cheating husband for murder? Woman whose response to harassment–behavior that many of the loudest whiners know is both creepy and reflective of their own thoughts/actions–is to break something?

Too scary. Unacceptable. Disturbing. These men hate being presented with the idea, even in fiction, that their position of power is socially constructed, that it could easily be flipped the other way. It terrifies them.

In feeling that terror, they experience a tiny modicum of what living, existing, moving, being perceived as a woman in the world is like.

When it comes to specific historical figures whom we have good reason to believe were what we’d consider to be ‘transmasculine’, I believe it is appropriate and necessary to protest revisionism casting them as cis women who did what they did to rebel from patriarchy. Reclaiming them restores us our history and honors their memory both.

However, when it comes to the broader issue of whether certain tendencies, more or less historically documented, should be considered ‘women’s rebellion’ or ‘transmasculinity’, I propose that we should do away with this limited framing entirely. This dualism was not created by transmasculine people but by others wishing to define us (often, define us out of existence). I propose that what today we call ‘transmasculinity’ is and always has been a part of (so-called) ‘women’s’ history, not just because there have always been transmasculine people who were seen and recorded (if they were recorded) as women, but also and especially because the impulses that lead towards transmasculinity are historically, and thus epistemologically, indistinguishable from the impulses leading towards rebellion to patriarchal standards and impositions.

To phrase it another way, there is no way under patriarchy for any woman to enter the historical record while following patriarchal precepts for women’s behavior perfectly and entirely. Any woman whose name we know, any woman who has made it into the patriarchy’s well-guarded archives of history, was a woman that flaunted the oppressive prescriptions for women’s behavior strongly enough to swim against the current and achieve this seemingly impossible victory. Thus, as all ‘women’s history’ is at least to some extent a record of rebellion to patriarchy, transmasculine people have a claim to all of ‘women’s’ history, because a woman being in history in and of itself is an aberration from gendered roles - a gender non conformity, if you will.

I had like one, maybe two friends who were all like FUCK YEAH YOU PAINT IT WHATEVER COLOR YOU WANT, PURPLE BEDROOMS ARE AWESOME.

But when they actualy saw the finished bedroom, every single one of them was like, “Oh yeah, that’s really pretty.” (Well, the ones who supported me from the beginning were more like WOOHOO.)

MEAN YOU HAVE TO ABANDON

WHAT MAKES YOU HAPPY.

When I bought my house, the kitchen was multiple shades of dingy white. It was dismal, but it was now mine! So went to the hardware store for paint (well, several trips, painted swatches on panel, etc — I’m very picky. But this was the final, ‘real’ trip). It was a busy day in the paint section. There were at least five people behind me in line.

Now, remember, latex paint is slightly lighter and brighter when wet than it is when dry. And I’d decided to paint my kitchen candy-apple red. The hardware store employee took my gallon off the Paint Jiggler and cracked it open to put a dab on the top, revealing the most incredibly deep pink, and behind me I hear the entire line of people say,

“Oh my god.”

…in perfect chorus.

This is the door to my garage. It used to be white. Live your best life.

Mischief the cat says “Who goes there?”

Every visiting friend says “This is so cool.”

my garage. It used to be

white. Live your best life.

not decorating trends; those have always existed. but the idea that color and decoration is inherently childish

this is the dining room at the Eustis Estate in Milton, Massachusetts, from 1878 (where I used to work, briefly). the walls are TEXTURED MICA SHIMMER on a green background. Adult Space For Adults!

A jewelry shop in Paris c. 1901. kids can’t buy jewelry!

who can forget the classic 1950s colorful bathroom? I’m not a huge fan, but still! adult space! bright colors; decorative designs!

So here’s two examples of traditional Norwegian farmhouse interiors. You know. The kinds of places peasants live in.

This type of painting is called “rosemaling” and today you usually find it on, like, carved wooden bowls and such that are only used for decoration. But back two centuries ago, it was very common to find the interiors of homes covered in it, in projects that were painted little by little over the decades. Because it’s beautiful to look at, paint is the cheapest way of decorating your house, and what else are you going to do on the long winter nights when it’s too dark and cold to work outdoors?

But mostly, they did it because it made them happy, and it was beautiful.

I just want to catch spelling errors and accidental double spaces and repeated phrases and whenever I use the wrong too/to or affect/effect and shit. But no. They've shoved AI up the ass of every grammar checking software out there and now they all fucking suck and make the most random, obnoxious, nonsensical suggestions.

I get why people keep saying this (and other versions of it like "Use Adobe alternatives" and "Use Google product alternatives."). But here's the problem: I do not create in isolation. Even my own 100% personal projects are getting sent to other people whether it's editors or printers or beta readers and unless every single person in that train is using the same products, things can get wonky.

Libre Office and Word handle formatting differently on the back end, which can completely break documents if you move them back and forth between the two. So if I write in Libre Office but my beta readers are still using Word, when I send them a manuscript for review there's a good chance things won't look right and my beta reader will not actually be reviewing what I sent them.

:| :| :|

It’s a lot of people caring more about having a pure theory where they can sort people into a perfect binary than being genuinely concerned with the way oppression actually works against us.

And it’s generally all specifically in the name of trying to make man and woman “classes”, the same as how radical feminists call male and female “classes”, where there is a distinct binary in how people will treat someone based on that “class” regardless of anything else. Thing is, I think cis and trans work more coherently as classes (but still not accurate to reality), but the same people pushing for man and woman to be distinct “classes” tend to not like separating themselves from their cis gender part like that for dysphoria reasons. And there’s a lot of “women are treated badly, that’s why trans women are treated badly, but extra because trans on top, see they treat trans people like their genders even if they’re trans!” when I think it’s more accurate that anyone deviating from gender norms is harmed by misogyny, and it isn’t proof someone is a woman that someone is misogynistic to them.

All of this feels like people trying to tie how oppression works with the validity of their genders. Which is why when we reject that all trans people are treated like their genders because no, trans men are not immediately given male privilege, it doesn’t make sense and really hurts these people. Because they’re using the idea that women are mistreated to help them feel like the people mistreating them are actually seeing them as their true genders.

It’s all so fucked up

I want it to go away

this is not life-threatening, but also who wants weeks of diarrhea and a fucking parasite in them lol. if you suspect you've already had this and it's passed, i would see a doctor. you might need an antiparasitic anyway. if you're actively sick, see a doctor and they might be able to prescribe medication to help you get over it faster.

try to avoid eating raw vegetables, scrub fruit with a produce brush and rinse thoroughly with water. again, don't bother with premade greens or bagged salads. if you buy lettuce, remove the outer 2-3 layers of leaves.