Have Some Thoughts

it turns out the uploader is in fact the woman in the photo (she's uploaded a few other pictures of herself to other articles) and she ran an extremely web 1.0 site on the topic of bondage

this was apparently a long-standing fantasy of hers and she in fact did an entire video plus accompanying photoshoot about it, which was run in a bondage magazine in the 90s and did in fact take place on an abandoned train track. they committed to the bit hard enough that there's even a shot of the sinister villain looming over her with a big document labeled DEED and a pen

the best part is that according to this page, there were two "villains" involved (the woman's two partners, apparently), and the other one was dressed as a gorilla. sadly there are no images of the gorilla kidnapper because that sounds like. even funnier.

"The hat is customizable," he said, struggling with the velcro patch on the front. "If I need it, I have an ICE one too. I pick based off the business i walk into."

"Customizable is an important hat descriptor," I said. "what can I get you?"

"You wouldn't believe how offended people get these days," he said. "And I'm supposed to do something about it if you're offended? You chose to be offended!"

"We all have hundreds of thousands of decisions everyday," I said. I thickened my accent. "That's what my stepdad always said. But I can make one easier - we have a delicious Ethiopian roast available."

"Like if I told you you have a bull ring," he said, "because bulls have rings in their noses. Is that offensive?"

I laughed. "I've heard that before."

"It's a joke, but people get offended. Maybe you're offended."

I looked at him. I smiled. "You aren't trying to offend me though, right?"

Of course he was. I was being friendly and the friendlier I was, the faster he switched topics. He was saying anything inflammatory he could think of to see if I'd take the bait. After about 20 minutes of my redirecting and deescalating, he settled into a more normal interaction. He took up too much of my time showing me a product I'd feigned mild interest in to get him to stop talking about getting accused of inappropriate behavior at work. When we finally disengaged, he spent 10 minutes trying to catch my eye again. When he failed, he left.

There's this new breed of customer who insists on trying to incite political conversation through their clothing and, when that doesnt work, their snide little comments. If I owned my own business, maybe I would have given the guy the fight he wanted. But I work for a corporation and I love paying my bills so I deescalated.

they: i dont understand

me: *explains in detail the difference between a fantasy setting w no misogyny n a fantasy setting where the creator just added women to the warrior class n put no further thought into it whatsoever*

they: *laugh* its a good fantasy setting, sir

A lot of fantasy worlds carry structural misogyny that mirrors our own world, that many readers take for granted, because we are not necessarily used to using the fictional space to imagine radically different worlds and consider what “no misogyny” looks like.

So for instance, even in worlds that an author might textually tell us “treat women equally”, and they prove it by having a woman be a warrior (“see? Women can do any job a man can do!”). But, if there’s no particularly different structure to society to handle domestic labour and childcare, then much like our modern world, it places a high burden on women to occupy dual roles in society. They must often be both carer and breadwinner (and also Hot, let’s not forget these settings always want all women to be Hot, and all “ugly” women are evil), while male protagonists are simply “themselves”. They are not truly equal with women because actually, they can look however they want, and also care work is not expected of them. It is rarely a constant passive part of their lives (when it is present, it is a very active part of their narrative, distinguishing them from the “norm” of the world). Women continue to occupy invisible roles in these narratives as the stay-at-home parents, the cooks in the kitchens, the hags, whose stories are unimportant to the narrative because they aren’t considered full and real people with rich interiority. The work of caring itself dehumanises them. The closest we typically get to valuing “carer roles” in fantasy is to create archetypes for the Healer, which are invariably very femme-coded and often tied to damsel-in-distress stories. (The Healer must often then distinguish herself from the devalued image of association with care work and femininity by becoming a warrior as well.)

And then, of course, there’s the uncritical reproduction of systems of violence and war that typically impacts women and other marginalised groups more than anyone else… because “fantasy”…

but the point isn’t to create an ever-moving bar here, because we could talk about all the ways in which this stuff shows up til the cows come home, but to talk about what it means to exercise the attempt to imagine what “no misogyny” looks like. Exploring the possibilities that open up when you ask, “what if childcare was structured communally instead of by individual families and how would that shape our heroes?” and “what if this society assigned gender roles differently/at a different age?” And “would a history in a different world full of female leaders conceive of territoriality differently compared to the Westphalian notion of the nation state as demarcated by men?”